Homeless in Vancouver: My spring haircut was so…21st century

Last Thursday (March 23) I cut my hair. There’s nothing normally newsworthy about this fact—I’ve cut my own hair many hundreds of times over the last 30-some years.

What was noteworthy about last night’s haircut was how quickly and easily I did it using a novel kind of hair-cutting doo-dad, which I found complete in its original box and sitting on top of a Dumpster where, I’m assuming, some kind Fairview resident left it.

The thing is branded as a Conair For Men Even Cut. It has apparently been sold in North America since 2011, while at the same time in Europe it has been branded as the Babyliss For Men Easy Cut.

Basically it’s a lawnmower for your head

The thing is bell-shaped, with comb-like scissor blades arrayed around the inside of the mouth of the bell.

The first thing you have to do is charge the internal, high-capacity Lithium-ion battery. The very first charge out of the box should be for something like 16 hours, according to the the manual and Conair’s video how-to.

Once the Even Cut is charged, you turn it on and simply sit the mouth on your head and move it around to cut your hair. You keep doing this until all your hair is cut to the same length. A full charge lasts about 20 minutes, which is twice the time it took to cut my hair.

Between adjustment settings and two different snap-on cutting guides to raise the distance of the blades from your scalp, hair can be cut to four different lengths—from 0.318 cm to 1.27 cm.

Secondly, you need to keep the Even Cut flat on your head, which is what it wants to do by design.

All you do is move it around—left-to-right, in  circles, or however you like—the blades cut in any direction. You can push it behind your ears all you want without any worry of cutting yourself, because the blades face inwards and are always parallel to the scalp.

The Even Cut works quickly, safely, and fairly flawlessly—and with little need for a mirror—you just keep pushing it around until no more hair cuttings fall.

The limits of the design preclude any fancy tapering effects and a person will still need to use the included hair shears to touch up the hair line, particularly at the back and an actual razor may still be needed to take those pesky little hairs off the neck.

Otherwise, if all a person wants is uncomplicated short hair then the Even Cut represents a fast and idiot-proof way to get the job done. The design is intelligent if not downright innovative and the build quality is good and solid. For its price tag of something under $50 a person could easily get their money’s worth in dozens of saved trips to the barber.

That the Easy Cut is small, cordless, works fast, and gives good results without a mirror makes it ideal kit for a homeless person such as myself.

It was very considerate of someone to leave it out for one of Fairview’s binners to find and I’m grateful that I was the one who did.

In fact it’s far too good to keep to myself and in the coming weeks I will be selectively sharing the gift of fast, no-fuss spring haircuts with select homeless friends.