Brush Fires

The customer in Mr. Eckhard's barbershop in San Francisco's elegant Fairmont Hotel was turning hot under the collar, both literally and figuratively. Proprietor Eckhard Helmholz, brandishing a wide-toothed bone comb in one hand and a flaming 10-in. jeweler's torch in the other, was preparing to go to work, while cooing assurances that "it isn't nearly as bad as it smells." It turns out to be the blowtorch cut, the hottest innovation in California coiffure circles since Warren Beatty in Shampoo.

Helmholz's tonsorial firing for effect is the result of complaints from customers whose fine, flyaway hair made them look more like Ben-Gurion than Ben Gazzara. Helmholz first tried to solve the problem with an old barber's trick: burning the ends with flaming candles. The knobby, stunted ends weighed down the hair and made it lie flat, all right, but Helmholz's Nob Hill clients waxed eloquent about tallow dripping down the backs of their necks. So Helmholz, 33, began experimenting with a small blowtorch and soon found it the perfect tool: "It is maneuverable, it singes places hitherto impossible to reach, and it is absolutely safe, as long as you always point the torch away from the skin."

Helmholz prepares for his singe jobs like a surgeon before an operation. Each customer gets a thorough workup, with the results--tensile strength, absorption factor and elasticity of hair--printed on special reference cards. Says Helmholz: "We leave nothing to chance." Then the hair is washed and scissor-trimmed by aides, after which Helmholz himself arrives, torch in hand. Moving it from right to left across the customer's head, using a comb as a baffle, he burns off a few strands at a time, starting at the front of the crown and working down to the earlobes and around the back. The acrid stench of burning hair fills the air. After ten minutes of work, Helmholz shuts off his torch, shampoos the hair to get rid of the smell and dries it under a heat lamp.

No Casualties. Helmholz has given 10,000 blowtorch cuts at a cost of $15 for an initial blaze and $10.50 for a return visit--with no casualties. Seventy percent of the customers come back, even though they must make appointments three days in advance. Says one recent, first-time customer: "My hair usually flies about and makes me look like Einstein. After my blowtorch cut, it miraculously stayed in place."

Women too are flocking to Helmholz's shop. With female customers, he twists the hair into separate ropes and then burns the ends. Afterward, he shampoos the hair as usual, but dries it, natch, with a blow dryer.

Word of Helmholz's technique has reached other barbers as well. At least 40 have come to him to learn the torch trick and are now practicing on customers in scattered shops in California, Georgia, Texas and other states.

Helmholz has even more exotic skills to impart. He does a brisk business styling men's chest hair into shamrocks, peace signs, hearts and other shapes on request. His torso tonsures, however, are done strictly with clippers.

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