This week I visit Eric Aleman, owner of the storied King of Kings Barber Shop in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. I’ve been going to him for a couple years and it’s always an odyssey which begins on my scalp and ends in my heart.
Eric, like a lot of good barbers, is able to step in and out of conversation. He’ll talk if you want to talk. Or he’ll just step back and keep working on your hair. That’s part of why I like him.
He’s not only a really solid barber, he’s also a talented lyricist, hip-hop artist/ whatever you want to call it. He’s a founding member of BLKLYST. Who you can check out playing at Littlefield’s or here on youtube.
If you listen real close here you can hear him shaving my neck at one point. It’s pretty hard to talk w a knife to your neck, but I did my best.
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SN2:EP4 “Emotional Graffiti”
@TimRacine and I on: cats that try to separate us from our lovers; frozen gummy bears; and lying about Pantera. Also, former NPR reporter Athena Desai ties a bow on a 14-year-old audio clip mystery I’ve been trying to get my head around since I left WBUR in 2002. -
SN5:EP3 “Doest Thou Even Hoist, Comrade?”
Months before the world changed, Chad Niel @PlantBasedChad offered me a Tofurkey wrap off a hummus-smeared plate and chided my reluctance to eat after him. Hauntingly, this twenty-sixth @wanderingaisles opens with a foreboding joke about germs and preparing for “the Big One.”
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SN4:EP6 “Sex Toilets”
Casing City Creek Center with Connie Daly, a retired Rhode Island school administrator, relationship sage, and spinner of some wild stories from the trenches of American education about sex toilets and sheep mutilation.
