Kris wanted to get his haircut. It's been about 5 months (!) since that last one, and he wanted to be freshly cut for the new quarter.

We left the house heading for a place that advertises "family haircuts". Pulled into the parking lot to discover that they aren't open. The neon OPEN sign is off, and there are no posted hours on the door. Did I mention we'd already been by once, and they'd been closed then too?

Next idea: I'd seen a barber shop on Bull Street somewhere near downtown. I don't know if Kris missed me saying "Downtown" or what, but he didn't shrink away in horror when I suggested it. We navigated through increasingly heavy traffic toward the center of town.

White Bluff turns into Bull Street as you approach the center of town. Why they do all this silly double-naming of streets is anyone's guess. We usually avoid driving into the center of town on Bull because Bull is one of the lucky streets that has squares.

Squares are the colonial equivalent of traffic circles. Pretty little parks in the midst of all the hustle and bustle, but they're worse, though, because since they're not round, you can't see oncoming traffic, pedestrians, or the damn horse drawn carriages. Most traffic circles I've seen have a round patch of grass or some low shrubs in the middle, but squares here are more like mini jungles of stately oak trees flowing with spanish moss and densely packed bushes. At any moment a Japanese tourist might leap out of the brush in front of your car, and as state laws go, hitting one of them would be poaching.

The rules of navigating the squares are (apparently) slow down as you approach the square, swerve quickly to avoid pedestrians (or stop and wave them on if you see them in advance), and once you're clear of pedestrians, drive like a maniac because once inside the flow of square traffic, you have the right of way!

Because people inside the square are driving like maniacs, it seems wise to be doubly careful as you enter the square, although the traffic behind you is infinitely more impatient and less bothered by the threat of you getting crushed by traffic than you are.

So, through three squares, we finally find the barber shop we're looking for. There is no street parking directly in front of the shop, so we circle the block to find a place.

Kris finds the same parking spot he always does, the meter with a 30 minute time limit in front of the metropolitan planning office. He's mad that I don't think 30 minutes is enough, but we circle the block (again) and end up pulling into the parking garage. The parking garage isn't bad at all, this is the second time in a week we've gone downtown and parked there. It's in that weird 4th dimension that parking garages are usually built in where you drive up one side and all roads seem to go up, and then when you're ready to exit all the roads seem to go down, but other than that it's a perfectly reasonable place to leave your car.

Leave parking structure and walk two blocks to barber shop. As we approach, we realize that we have one dollar in cash between the two of us, and this barber don't take no American Express. Decide to locate the Bank of America and use the ATM, but neither of us can remember where the BoA is.

Downtown Savannah is a fairly large district for the size of the town. In fact, in number of city blocks, it might be the largest downtown anywhere in America. And all those blocks look the same. Large neo-classical buildings, carriage houses, and at least one greek revival church on every block. We wandered around for about 20 minutes trying to find the bank, and I believe we were lucky to find it in that short amount of time. Luckily, the Bank of America is in a neo-classical building located right next to another neo-classical building, so seeing the two buildings together clued us in.

By this time we've been walking around for about 30 minutes, and it's the South, so it's hot and humid and I'm starting to feel a little damp. We head back to the barber shop, and find that the procedure there is simple. Walk in, sign your name on the list, have your name called. Snip snip. Pay and go home.

Kris got a pretty decent haircut, and I think he was delighted that he didn't have to try to tell them how to cut his hair. Usually they ask a barage of questions which when answered in standard American English and translated into Haircutese, turns out to be too much or not enough of a cut. As we were walking back to the car, we decided that was the beauty of going to a barber instead of a so-called stylist.

I suspect that Kris will be getting his hair cut there again, despite the fact that going downtown is like vacationing in a non-English speaking country. The locals are very helpful but speak only in smiles and nods, the traffic is impatient and would sooner see you smoldering in an alley than be in the way, and everything and nothing looks like anything you're used to.