Humor – Page 12 – MOLLY SELTZER

This story is unpublished. It was written for a class while Molly was attending Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.

It is Halloween morning, and Kelly Kraft is dressed as a louse.

I, a reporter, am not dressed as anything (though I am dressed). I am standing on the stoop of Hair Fairies in Lincoln Park, and I have just realized my mouth is hanging open.

Kraft, 30, is the manager of Hair Fairies, a salon that manually removes head lice. As she guides me inside, I admire her brown boots, all the rage this fall, and a dress that might have looked nicer without the extra sets of arms pinned to it.

I am startled to discover another employee masquerading as a nit, with a white trash-bag body and aluminum foil “glue” to bind herself to a hair on some enormous unseen head. I am not sure if I should shake hands.

“It’s going to be a zoo today,” Kraft says happily. “We’ve got a group of five already in here.”

Hair Fairies Inc. is a privately held company, owned by Maria Botham.

After reading an article that named head lice as the top reason why children miss school, Botham, 38, spent two years working in physicians’ offices and researching lice shampoos. The first Hair Fairies salon opened in Los Angeles in 1999. The company has expanded into three other cities – New York, San Francisco and, in December 2008, Chicago.

“I wanted to have salons where we always place ourselves in the Beverly Hills of that city and make the salons really beautiful to break the stigma of head lice,” Botham says. “People think that it’s a problem with underserved communities, but really head lice don’t discriminate. We have every A-list celebrity go through our salons.”

The people I saw, aside from the bug and the nit, weren’t celebrities, but children. Surprisingly quiet children. All had a GameBoy, DVD player or other noise toy in their laps, and they sat calmly while Kraft and the five other Chicago employees combed through their hair.

Botham estimates the Chicago shop sees between 250 and 300 heads a week, and Kraft says they inspect at least 20 people a day. The process involves combing the hair when it’s dry, again when it’s wet, shampooing, applying an oil meant to prevent the lice from wanting to be on the hair and then blow-drying the client.

“I was a hair stylist for 11 years,” Kraft says. “I was doing high fashion! This is the whole other end of the spectrum and to be honest, it’s much more gratifying.”

Hair Fairies’ objective is to offer relief to parents who are too grossed out to do the work themselves and too stressed out to deal with their kids’ tears of shame. The Fairies, bearing brushes and tissues and toys, are there to do it for them.

“Most clients come in and they’ve already spent over $500 between dry cleaning, cleaning their homes, hair products, and they’ve missed a week and a half of school,” Botham says. “They are very distraught. They’re emotional, upset. They’re agitated. They’re usually exhausted.”

To be a Hair Fairy is to be a nanny, doctor and a therapist, one who can interact with children and adults. The Fairies soothe anguished parents – some of whom drop their children at the salon and speed away before anyone can see them.

They also explain and discuss the medical side of lice – like the fact that the bugs cannot fly, hop or jump. (Their ability to skip remains to be determined. It is thought unlikely.) They explain that the bugs go dormant when they’re exposed to extreme temperatures or if you hold your head under water. They explain that lice are asexual.

A Fairy would tell you that lice can only be transmitted through head-to-head contact and not through clothing or bedding. (Headbutt champions and Siamese twins: beware. Ladies of the night and hat models may breathe easy.)

Employees are trained for 90 days before they can start their Fairy duties. Kraft says she “had no less than six interviews” to land the job and Botham refers to a “three-inch thick manual” of conduct and information. Hair Fairies has roughly 60 employees between the four salons and Chicago will be hiring again next month.

A. Jae Matthews, 26, is a loud, cheery black man. He is a Hair Fairies employee, and today he’s wearing a sparkly black wig that makes him look rather like Rick James. Matthews was a promoter for a theater before he became a Fairy and tells me he dislikes insects.

“I don’t do well with bugs,” he says.

“Were you worried about that coming into this job?” I ask.

“I was apprehensive about a lot of aspects of this. It’s funny though, working here hasn’t helped me with bugs, but with people. I still have all my reservations about spiders, just not head lice or humans.”

Kraft says most clients take comfort in knowing that the salons are full of people who have lice, so everyone in the shop is tolerant. She suggests they feel a type of camaraderie. I almost suggest they form a street gang.

“People love that every other person in here has had lice or is not freaked out by lice,” she says. “The biggest thing is that parents aren’t educated on the subject, and they don’t have a clue how to make it better, and that’s their job as a parent. And so I get those mothers and fathers and then I get to give them the knowledge and calmness to feel like they’re in control again, all in an environment where they’re comfortable.”

The Hair Fairies shop has a wood-paneled floor with bright, overhead track lighting. Mirrors at each station are hemmed by thick wood frames carved to look as if the wood was woven. There is a waiting area in the front, filled with magazines like Cosmopolitan, Shape and Self.

“The salons are absolutely gorgeous,” Botham says. “They feel like mini spas!”

All the children are occupied with games or toys, and there’s a counter with snacks available for anyone who wants them. Occasionally a child – in a zombie-like trance, with eyes and thumbs still glued to whatever device he or she is holding – will stumble over and select a sweet. Everywhere there is the smell of toasting hair as clients are styled. It floats above the slight tang of Botham’s all-natural lice shampoo.

All the furniture is slick and cold to the touch. Most of the seating is wooden. As I look around, I realize the place – without the buzzing, happy Fairies – looks rather stiff and uncomfortable.

“The bugs can live for 24 to 48 hours and they need a fiber to travel, so everything is leather or vinyl or wood,” Kraft explains. “That’s so we’re not passing it back and forth through our environment.”

The décor is not sterile, however. Perhaps it’s the glittered, brightly colored fairy art hanging between the mirrors. Could be the bustling workers or the happy (if technologically occupied) children. Or the moms who can snatch moments to themselves while their kids get colored gels slathered on their hair after a treatment.

Barbara Kizziah is one such mother. She is a 43-year-old blond who enters Hair Fairies clutching a Starbucks cup and a Chanel bag. Her pink cable-knit sweater has no pills, pulls or puckers. She is loud, tan and attaches herself to Lane, a bucktoothed nine-year-old getting green streaks.

“I didn’t find anything this time,” Kraft says.

“Yahoo!” Kizziah shouts, pumping her fists. It is their final visit in the Hair Fairies four-part treatment.

“She got it, we think, from her carpool,” Kizziah tells me, with one hand on my forearm. “My first thought was ‘Holy shit.’ I was like, ‘Oh my God, you’ve got to be kidding me.’”

Kizziah said she didn’t think she had the time to comb through Lane’s hair and wasn’t sure which products would be most effective. She admits to being “slightly panicked,” but feels she is making the best of a lousy (louse-y) situation.

“I just didn’t want to do it, and I didn’t feel like I’d do an effective job,” she says. “The cocktail conversation is not bad, though. Last weekend I was like, ‘O.K. people, lice – can you stand it?’”

Botham says the company is healthy. Kraft says the Chicago shop is always busy. (It’s nice to know there are enough lice in Chicago to keep six people occupied.) But the social status of the clientele brings up an important question – how much does all this cost?

The number for the price depends on the number of the lice. There is a one-hour minimum per person per visit, which totals $95. After that, it’s $23.75 for every additional 15 minutes. Kraft estimates most people pay about $380.

Upon hearing that, I was ready to jump, hop, fly and maybe skip to the conclusion that Hair Fairies was entirely a luxury and only available to the solidly wealthy, or as we call them in America, the upper middle class. Not exactly so.

“We’re many times covered by medical insurance, which opens up the demographic,” Botham said. “We do get parents who are absolutely wearing a big hat and sunglasses and when they enter the door and they see it’s all their colleagues and see it’s the same kind of person that they are, that’s when they open up.”

Kraft says: “Our clients here are professionals, and they feel comfortable when they run into other professional-type people here.”

Hair Fairies is both notable and deplorable. It’s a wonderful concept – take something that icks people out and give them a 100 percent guarantee you’ll solve the problem. It’s hands-off, a sure thing. That’s also why I think it could be bad for us– it’s the Stepford way to do things. No matter how unpleasant, part of parenting should be to sit on the edge of the bathtub and scrape bugs off a child’s scalp. It tells the child they care enough to do something gross. (Better still if the father can contain his gagging noises at the smell of over-the-counter lice treatments and the mother can still her shivers when she sees a live bug.)

I got lice when I was in sixth grade. (We think it was from wearing hats during a school play. Even now that she knows this is highly unlikely, my mother still insists a traveling theater troupe gave us the bugs. “It was a rogue licing,” she says with great indignation.) When we consulted my aunt, an elementary school teacher well versed in the ways of lice, and I was pronounced bug-positive, I was grasped firmly about the shoulders and pressed into her breast for a big hug. It was the best way to cure my self-loathing. We then spent a month dousing my head in poisonous chemicals. My mother was behind me for the combing but beside me for the experience. And that counted. I remember that.

If I had instead been taken to Hair Fairies, I think I would have felt differently. She would have dropped me off and gone to run some errands. Maybe to meet a friend for lunch. Maybe to hit up a quick yoga class. Either way, she wouldn’t have been there. She wouldn’t have needed to be. I had friendly, cheery Fairies attending to me and some moving images to stare at.

Which is not to say the people that use Hair Fairies are bad parents. They aren’t. And Botham’s not a bad person either. She’s a rich person, or on her way.

“We’re trying to be the Starbucks of head lice removal,” she says. “We’re trying to build an empire here.” Botham is currently opening a store in Seattle and plans to be in all 50 states within five years. “Maybe less.

“When I told all my friends I was going to start this corporation, everyone laughed at me and told me I was nuts. But I really knew in my core that this was something people needed,” Botham says. “Head lice is like getting a cold, that’s how common it is. I knew I could create a brand that was massive.”

I have seen all I need to see at Hair Fairies. I collect my notebook and pen, wave goodbye to the people and bugs I’ve met, and step onto the crowded Lincoln Park street. My skin crawls a bit, but my scalp doesn’t itch. I am very, very glad.

This story is unpublished. It was written for a class while Molly was attending Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.

Nighttime at Crepe and Coffee Palace

It’s 11 p.m. and Crepe and Coffee Palace is packed. Every table is taken and the windows are fogged from the inside, a sign that winter is roosting in Chicago again. I look around.

The cafe is full of couples – young gay men, an older fellow and his wife, me and my notebook. I hear Hebrew, Korean, Spanish and French. It’s also full of empty stomachs, the universal language. I hope the Arabic music from the stereo will cover up mine’s audible complaints.

Every scrap of space is covered – the place has texture. Algerian rugs, some prayer, some not, are hung at angles on the walls, which are pumpkin orange. There are bright blue squares of color, outlined with a Byzantine-style bell shape. Inside the bell are paintings, candle holders, metal ornaments. I think I see an image of Mata Hari in a back corner.

“I was trying to make an Algerian atmosphere. You know, combining the Middle Ages and elements of Spain, Istanbul, other things from the Islamic world. I wanted a Moorish type of feeling,” says owner Belkacen Belmetdmnani. “You know, mosques. Casbah. You know.”

There are mirrors, and not only mirrors, but scraps of mirrors — tiny squares mosaicked together or placed at the edge of each table. They reflect light and open up the space, which is small. It is cramped but comfortable, like visiting your old bedroom after moving away from home.

Chandeliers dangle dangerously, cockeyed and tilted because there isn’t enough room for all to hang plumb to the floor. They remind me of jellyfish, hovering close to have a look at what I’m eating.

And, with the jellyfish encouraging me, I order a Crepe Amar. It combines Nutella and strawberries, which Belmetdmnani says is the menu’s most popular item.

“American tastes,” he says, shrugging, then tells me the café goes through 20 pounds of Nutella each week.

While I sip my water – with two cucumber slices bobbing in it – I look at the other wall decorations. Belmetdmnani, 50, was born in Icosium (also known as Algiers, also known as Alger, also known as Al-Jaza’ir), the capital of Algeria. He attended culinary school there and moved to the U.S. to study mechanical engineering. In 1988, he opened Mamacita’s, a Mexican restaurant two doors down and started Crepe and Coffee Palace in 2003.

I strike up a conversation with a pretty girl sitting near my left knee (quarters this close encourage chatting with strangers). Her name is Julie Tillinger. She is 29 and waiting for her date to arrive.
“It’s a blind date, so I won’t know when he’s here,” she says, flapping the menu around. A friend sent him a picture beforehand so he could recognize her.

“It’s nerve-wracking because the picture she sent is of me a few years ago, so I’m worried he’s going to sit down and say, ‘Oh, I didn’t expect you to be so wrinkly.’”

Suddenly, a crepe glides onto my table, like some kind of edible UFO. The waitress doesn’t have room to serve from the front, so she lands the crepe with her arm hooked around from behind me. Centered in the middle of a white plate at least 15 inches in diameter is the crepe, golden and roped and folded over itself. It is stuffed with sliced strawberries and oozing hazelnut goo. It’s circled with squiggles of raspberry and chocolate sauce, interspersed with big, fat, generous gobs of whipped cream. A scoop of green pistachio ice cream melts quietly in the corner. I melt noisily onto my table, a mess of oohs and aahs and mmms.

It is delicious, and Tillinger’s date arrives with flowers.

Daytime at Crepe and Coffee Palace

Felix looks out the window. He is a stubby Latino with thick curls, a red bandana and a very clean apron. Felix is the primary cook at Crepe and Coffee Palace, and he won’t give me his last name. Or answer any questions. He is very amiable about this. He shakes his head no, smiles, and begins to squirt whipped cream onto a bald and waiting crepe. Krghhhh, says the can, shouting down my follow-ups.

Whipped cream is not listed as an ingredient but is present in almost every dish. Hot drinks drown in it. The crepes come surrounded by mounds of whipped cream that stick to the plate like starfish.

It’s 10 a.m. and I order a hot chocolate. It arrives in a glass mug: thick, creamy, just warmer than the room and insulated by four inches of shiny, slippery whipped cream. Felix is not a man who diddles around with dollops. I give him a nod of respect.

“People like the whipped cream because it tastes good, so we keep putting it on,” says Bailey Bartes, the daytime waitress. “It’s just better that way.”

Bartes is 21 years old. She was born and raised in Lincoln Park, in a brick apartment building about three blocks from the café. She studied communications at Iowa Wesleyan College but dropped out to recover from foot surgery and picked up the waitressing job to fill the time.

“I’ve got two pins and a plate,” she says. “I can’t do much else. It’s small here, so I don’t have to do a lot of walking, and the people are nice. I like it enough.”

Bartes says the day shift can be slow, estimating that she might seat 10 tables working from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. She and Felix pass the time by bantering with the regulars and each other (Bartes chatters, Felix listens). While I’m in the café, a friend of Bartes drops by and gets a free Turkish coffee. The postman walks in and has a brief but fantastic conversation with Bartes, with Felix silently interrupting to pass over a cup of tea or piece of fruit.

“How come you never called me, Bailey-girl?” the postman jives.

“I lost your number.”

“And what, you couldn’t find it somehow else?”

“Nope. My dog ate my phone, so I had to wait five days for him to shit it out again.”

“Maybe next week, Bailey-girl?”

“Maybe next week,” she says.

I lean over the counter to watch Felix making my crepe. He pours thin ribbons of batter onto a flat griddle. The surface looks cool to the touch, serene and greased, but when the drip hits, it bubbles and sizzles and pops. I feel like a sailor, leaning over the edge of a boat, looking into a black sea that could swallow me whole. I will swallow it instead.

“Looks good, eh?” Felix says, his first words to me.

“Oh, yes,” I murmur. “It looks very good.”

And it is. I eat it at the counter, looking out the window like Felix. Bartes is laughing loudly in the back kitchen. A couple comes through the door, cheeks red with the new fall chill. I wave goodbye to Felix and leave behind the cozy little Algerian world in the middle of Chicago.