BEFORE my $10 blow-out

You could pull your hair out looking for cheap beauty services in New York. Take, for example, the blow-out. It’s a basic treatment that runs upward of $45 at popular salons like Beehive and Woodley & Bunny, and Slope Suds is right there at $40+. So, when I heard that there was a Daily News-approved salon in Bath Beach, Brooklyn offering blow-outs for a measly $10, I was more than willing to brave the freezing one-hour subway ride from Williamsburg for the good hair deal. After all, there isn’t a cheap-o hair experiment I’d ever pass up.

Image Crew Studio (1723 86th St.) offers a shampoo, massage and blow-dry for only $10. Since my hair is naturally straight I decided to go into this experiment with my best unwashed, parted-on-the-side-to-hide-the-grease-bangs “Sunday” hair (it was Thursday, but I had the day off so it was a Sunday for me). I figured that by going in with my hair in its natural state I would better understand just how good this place was.

When I arrived I was warmly greeted by a middle-aged Asian woman who took my coat, looked me over and instantly knew I wanted the famous $10 special. She took me to the shampoo area, washed my hair and massaged my head and neck with such skill that when she finished, I was content as a newborn after a nap. I was so happy I didn’t have a single snarky thought about the circa 1999 Jessica Simpson posters that dotted the walls.

With my scalp still tingling I was handed over to a middle-aged man who combed out my hair and, after some minimal communication about what style I wanted (“uh… straight?”), began sectioning off my hair and blowing it out. This was probably the best blow-drying experience I’ve ever had with someone else behind the blow-dryer. He worked as if with delicate strands of gold—not the over-processed, ill-kept tangles that I try to pass off as human hair. This man was obviously a hair-drying master. When he was finished, he offered me a light dusting of hairspray, ran his fingers through my locks to smooth it all out, and my hair bounced.

I left the salon with my hair looking as it almost never does, which is to say, nice.  Sure, the salon doesn’t offer the luxury services and ambiance of a higher-end salon may (unless you love blond pop stars from and ’80s linoleum flooring), but the experience and end-result is definitely worth more than the $10 price tag.

AFTER

Image Crew Studio, 1723 86th St. at Bay 16th St., 718-236-1388, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week

No styling skills are required for admission to Empire, which is one of the area academies where future hairdressers must toil for seven to 16 months before taking the New York State licensing exam. The school offers the public $10 practice cuts by pupils with little and possibly no experience, which was evident when I checked in for my appointment and was randomly assigned to a student who stared at me with a look of fear. That probably should have been my first clue that things weren’t going to go well.

ME: BEFORE

I had come prepared with a Flickr photo of the haircut I wanted: a simple bob that I thought would be easy to replicate. My student-hairdresser shampooed my hair, combed it out straight and awkwardly took her scissors and cut one line all around the bottom of my hair. Add another line around my face for my bangs and she was done, or so she thought.

As she started to blow dry my hair with the force of someone who didn’t have experience working on actual human heads, my hair started to take an odd form. One side was at least two inches shorter than the other and the ends stood out, making my head look like a triangle block. My bangs looked weird too, suddenly stretching around half my head and clumping together in a strange way. My student-hairdresser looked confused at the way my hair had turned out and suggested that she flat-iron it as though that would fix my strange cut.

I was trying my best to hide my nervousness, but this was beginning to look bad. I’m not someone who is particularly picky about haircuts and I’ve definitely had a few embarrassing hairdos hidden in my past but this wasn’t some intentionally asymmetrical hair style, this was just bad. My student-hairdresser rushed over to the instructor, a woman named Miss B., who looked at my head and started to scream.

Apparently, that whole cut-around-like-a-line business isn’t how you’re supposed to cut hair—you know, resulting in the choppy triangle-shape that was now on my head. I wondered to myself that if a student-hairdresser doesn’t know the basics of cutting hair to the point where an instructor is yelling at her in front of everyone, why is she even taking clients? But there was something more important on hand: my vanity.

Miss. B. fixed what she could, getting rid of the triangle shape and showing the student-hairdresser how to get rid of some of the unevenness. As much as Miss B. tried, I still knew it wasn’t going to look great.

There were other clients in the salon and they left with nice enough hairdos, so I think my experience probably wasn’t the norm. I left with a $10 haircut that looks like a $10 haircut—or like something a handy friend gave me. When I asked some friends later that night what they thought, they simply replied that despite some unevenness, it was “fine.”

And so it is. Instead of spending more money to fix my hair, I’m just going to let it grow out until I figure out where to get my next cheap haircut, which won’t be at Empire. Maybe I’ll just ask a friend.

AFTER

AFTER