Can your SLO County barber or beauty salon outlast the shutdown? Only with the right help
Think back: When’s the last time you had a proper haircut?
Five weeks, six maybe?
That’s roughly how long local barbers and beauty salons have been closed on account of coronavirus. And so far, there’s no indication as to when they can reopen in San Luis Obispo County — or anywhere else in California.
And it’s not just hair stylists; nail salons, estheticians, spas and masseuses also have closed their doors.
And oh, how we miss them!
Sure, there are DIY fixes we can do at home, like trimming bangs or touching up roots. (Home color kits are purportedly the new hard-to-find item.)
But be forewarned: Leave the all-over cuts and color to the professionals.
“I wouldn’t cut my own hair,” warned stylist Larella Ellsworth. “It’s not easy.”
She owns Tigerlily Salon and Spa in San Luis Obispo, which is a mecca for hair stylists; there are more than half-a-dozen salons just in the downtown core.
Ellsworth sympathizes with what we’re going through and was willing to share some hair-trimming tips via a video tutorial.
Two keys to remember: Trim hair when it’s dry! And make sure it’s clean!
While at-home trims can tide us over, when the COVID-19 crisis is over, we’ll want to get back to our old routines ASAP.
The question is, how many personal care workers will be able to survive financially?
Financial hardships
While nearly every “nonessential” small business has been hurt by the shelter-at-home order, it’s been especially tough on personal care workers.
Unlike restaurants, they can’t offer takeout. Aside from beauty products, there’s little they can sell online. And while gyms and personal trainers can lead classes virtual classes, it’s impossible to virtually cut someone’s hair or paint someone’s nails.
On top of that, many personal care workers are self-employed, which makes applying for benefits more complicated.
It was just last week — roughly five weeks into the stay-home order — that California announced a benefit program for the self-employed, gig workers and independent contractors.
But there’s a catch: The state Employment Development Department isn’t even accepting applications until April 28, and in the meantime, bills for rent, insurance, utilities and car loans keep piling up.
How to help
We can help in small ways — buying gift cards, shopping for beauty products online or even donating stimulus payments to organizations that help the growing army of the unemployed.
But unless there’s a Bill Gates out there who’s willing to help, it’s going to take far more than personal generosity to make things right for all the local businesses we frequent.
Loans for small businesses sound promising, but that hasn’t worked out for many local residents, including Ellsworth, whose family has suffered a double financial hit. Her husband, Gary Ellsworth, is also in the personal care business; he owns the Sink or Swim tattoo shop in Grover Beach.
With both their shops shuttered, Gary has been concentrating on painting pet portraits, and Larella has been selling hair products via delivery, but their main sources of income are kaput.
Between them, they’re paying three rents: his shop, her shop and their home.
“That’s a whole lot of pet portraits and hair kits to try to sell in a month,” said Larella.
She’s understandably frustrated about the lack of support for truly small businesses — ones like hers, with far, far fewer than 500 employees. (The Small Business Administration defines a small business as one with fewer than 500 employees.)
What would it take to reopen?
While it seems unrealistic to allow hair salons to reopen when — by their very nature — it’s impossible to keep that six-foot social distance, there has been growing pressure to relax restrictions.
A wave of online petitions — including at least one originating in California — asks state officials to allow hair stylists and barbers to reopen on a limited basis.
Most petitions suggest allowing only one customer in at a time, with strict adherence to sanitation, including masks, gloves and scrupulous wipe-downs of all surfaces. That system puts far fewer people at risk than, say, having dozens of people inside a grocery store at the same time, according to stylists advocating to reopen.
San Luis Obispo County is discussing a plan to relax shelter-at-home restrictions due to the low number of cases here, but county officials have yet to release details, and the state has given no hint as to when restrictions on personal care businesses might be eased.
Of course, in the grand scheme, staying healthy is far, far more important than having nicely styled hair.
And when it comes down to it, there are always hats, right?
Still, state and local governments shouldn’t leave personal care workers in limbo.
If there is a way to allow them to get back to work in a safe manner in the not-too-horribly distant future, let them know.
Even allowing just one client at a time could bring some relief to those businesses on the brink of financial disaster.
It could also discourage desperate, out-of-work stylists from doing cut-and-colors on the sly.
That’s the message Ellsworth wants delivered.
“How does the city or the state, for that matter, not see that our well-being is ... compromised when we are facing complete financial devastation,” she said via Facebook.
“They need to help us make a plan to safely get back to work, before people act like idiots and take it upon themselves to go back to work illegally, in an unsafe manner.”
This story was originally published April 22, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
