From the barber's chair: A view of the economy and other tid bits

With the holidays over and a morning meeting canceled today, I had some time to get my hair cut. I go to a real barber shop with straight razors, hot towels, alcohol sprays - just a "regular Joe" kind of place. Today, they only had two barbers working and when I sat down in the chair the barber started talking about the economy. He told me how he's tried to pay off his credit cards and is vowing, as a New Year's resolution, to only pay cash for things. I asked how traffic has been in the shop and he said that business is off by 80% (!). He said that when gas prices were higher earlier in the year, that's when things started falling off. He said that most guys are wearing their hair really short and just keeping up with grooming by using their own set of clippers. He says it's rare now for anyone to bring kids into the shop - most are just taking care of them at home. He said that his customers now almost completely consist of people currently employed by the County that have to maintain their hair at a certain length, etc.

This is a barber shop that a regular run-of-the-mill haircut is $12. I usually tip $3. It's also one that's been around for at least 20 years.

And, back to Lake Worth for a moment: Can we all agree that a shopping mall never was proposed for the beach? There is a "blogger" - how she refers to yours truly - that insists that a shopping mall was proposed to be built at the beach. And, this "blogger" insists that the no lease over twenty years of City property charter amendment that was passed a couple of years ago was somehow violated since the Greater Bay agreement talked about a lease of 19 years and 360 or some such number of days. This somehow violated the spirit or intent of the charter amendment. This always begs the question with me - then why didn't you include more restrictive language in the Charter Amendment? Or is it just never quite right regardless of whatever is done? This was the impetus behind the lawsuit filed by certain aggrieved citizens - the status of which is unknown.