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Need a Haircut? Pay What You Wish at This Barbershop

Good morning. It’s Monday. You did remember to set your clock ahead, didn’t you? Today we’ll look at what happens when customers can pay what they can. We’ll also look at how New York’s State Capitol, dormant during the pandemic, is coming back to life.

Credit…Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York Times

It’s a counterintuitive strategy at a time when prices are rising: Let customers pay what they want. Even nothing. But a chain of barbershops in Brooklyn and Manhattan is pleased with the results.

The chain, Fellow Barber, began offering pay-what-you-can haircuts as the city emerged from the pandemic. It’s a variation on a model called P.W.Y.W., for pay what you want. One of Fellow Barber’s employees had tried it in California, where the chain also has shops, as a way to reach different subsets of the population, including homeless people.

When pandemic shutdowns ended and barbershops reopened last year, Sam Buffa, the company’s founder, decided to take pay-what-you-want indoors and make it a part of the company’s business plan. “Part of this idea is what’s overlooked, especially in men’s culture — how transformative a haircut can be,” Buffa said.

It’s an approach that a handful of retail operations have tried, with mixed results. The travel booking site Priceline became famous with the slogan “Name your own price” but has dropped that feature for flights, hotels and rental cars. Radiohead released a P.W.Y.W. album online in 2007 that was downloaded 1.2 million times in the first two days. Panera Bread, promising a better experience for people who were struggling with food insecurity, tried P.W.Y.W. with several nonprofit cafes. It closed them after a management shake-up.

The online retailer Headsets.com offers P.W.Y.W. once a year. “A few people rip us off and pay a dollar” for a purchase, said Mike Faith, the chief executive, “but most people pay the full price.”

Iris Mohr, the chair of marketing at the Peter J. Tobin College of Business at St. John’s University in Queens, said there were advantages for retailers. “You have the opportunity to cross-sell,” she said. “You have the opportunity to sell products in the store” not covered by P.W.Y.W.

Buffa, of Fellow Barber, saw P.W.Y.W. as an opportunity to appeal to people whose jobs had disappeared while they were holed up in their apartments during the pandemic.

“We felt there were a lot of people who were going to be looking for jobs, had lost their way of making income and were starting to re-enter the world,” he said, “and probably didn’t feel like they could go get the haircut they wanted or needed in a time when they needed it more than ever.” Or could afford a haircut in a shop where the price list tops out at $75.

He started “pay what you can Mondays” as a once-a-week experiment. “It filled those gaps when we were slower, and it was nice to have energy in the shops and people cutting hair,” he said.

Business on Mondays was better than he expected. He said most customers paid about $25, about half the average price at Fellow Barber. The chain benefited because it was paying the barbers hourly wages, in contrast to shops where barbers are paid only by the haircut.

Now paying what you want gets a haircut any day of the week — from a “junior barber.”

Fellow Barber has a three-tiered system, with master barbers; experienced barbers who make up most of the work force; and junior barbers, who are mostly recent graduates of a barbering school. Buffa decided to aim P.W.Y.W. at junior barbers, whose work is supervised by a more experienced barber. Junior barbers are paid about $18 an hour, whether they are cutting hair or not.

“Pay what you can gives them an opportunity to get more hair and get more repeats” he said — customers who come back if they like the results.

The results for the chain? “We assumed we would lose money,” Buffa said. “We were pleasantly surprised we are breaking even.”


Weather

Enjoy a sunny day with a breeze that will make for a milder afternoon and temps in the mid-50s. At night, it will be partly cloudy with temps dropping to the low 40s.

alternate-side parking

In effect until Thursday (Purim).


Suspect in MoMA stabbings, at large, posts online

The man the police accuse of jumping over the curved reception desk at the Museum of Modern Art and stabbing two employees on Saturday remained at large on Sunday, and appeared to post his own account on social media.

The police identified the suspect as Gary Cabana, 60, saying he had been denied entry because his membership had been revoked. The two victims — a 24-year-old woman and a 24-year-old man — were listed in stable condition at Bellevue Hospital, the police said.

Surveillance video showed a man running into the museum with a knife in one hand. The police said he had been a regular at MoMA.

John Miller, a deputy police commissioner, said the accused man had been involved in two recent incidents of disorderly conduct at the museum. Police officials said that a letter revoking his membership had been sent out on Friday. On Saturday, when the man was refused admission, he became “upset,” Miller said.

On Sunday, a Gary Joe Cabana posted on Facebook that “Security NEVER escorted me from MoMA on the 2 ‘supposed’ days I ‘acted up.’” He wrote “THERE WERE NO DISRUPTIONS” and added, “Total blind side when I got ‘the letter.’”

At another point in the post, he wrote, “Bipolar is a tough road to hoe. Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. Then U get framed” and complained about being “evicted from MoMA (not just the movies, ALL THE ART, too).”

MoMA, which was closed on Sunday, said it would remain closed today but would reopen on Tuesday.


The latest New York news

  • In Washington Square Park — a place that is no stranger to weed, surreptitiously sold or smoked — a breezy open-air market has emerged in the wake of legalization.

  • The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church is allied with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Some of its members in New York are anguished.

  • According to the N.Y.P.D., two sleeping homeless men were shot, one fatally, by the same person early Saturday morning.

  • Trinity Wall Street is putting Julian Wachner, its high-profile director of music, on leave while it investigates an accusation of sexual misconduct against him. He has denied the accusation.


Albany revs up again

Credit…Tristan Spinski for The New York Times

The pandemic halted the daily rhythms of New York’s cavernous State Capitol in Albany. Lawmaking became a solitary business as elected officials working remotely, away from the corridors where lobbyists tried to buttonhole them, away from the steps out front where activists staged demonstrations.

Suddenly, the Capitol went from being abuzz to being deserted. “It was like wandering around Hogwarts at night,” said Michael Gianaris, who as the deputy majority leader of the State Senate was one of the few lawmakers required to show up during the pandemic. “In a word, surreal.”

But now things are picking up at the Capitol. Lawmakers have largely returned for the 2022 legislative session, which runs from January to June, typically for three or four days a week.

The Omicron variant disrupted the return to Albany just as many anticipated normalcy. Omicron also delayed the recovery of the city’s downtown area, which relies largely on legislative business and office workers.

About 70 percent of the employees who work in downtown Albany have now returned to their offices, according to the Downtown Albany Business Improvement District. The MVP Arena, a stadium that hosts sports games and concerts, is attracting crowds again. The Palace Theater recently sold out a comedy show featuring Kevin Hart in four hours.

“Covid paused the development and revitalization of downtown,” said Georgette Steffens, the group’s executive director. “Now we’re picking up where we left off.”


What we’re reading

  • At the Metropolitan Opera, which will host a concert in support of Ukraine this evening, the Ukrainian bass-baritone Vladyslav Buialskyi has become a symbol of the struggle against the Russian invasion.

  • From two public housing sites in Brooklyn to the Hunts Point rail station, these are among the 21 properties that the governor nominated for the state and national registers of historic places, Gothamist reports.


METROPOLITAN diary

No frills

Dear Diary:

In 1990, on one of my frequent trips to New York, I stayed at a modestly priced, no-frills hotel near Lincoln Center.

The room was tiny, and the menu was limited in terms of breakfast choices.

When the tray with coffee and milk arrived, I asked the server for a spoon, as there wasn’t one on the tray.

He sighed.

“All the spoons are in use right now,” he said.

— Ilene Starger

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.


Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.

Melissa Guerrero, Jeff Boda and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].

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