When Gov. Gavin Newsom announced last week that hair salons and barbershops can serve clients indoors, hair stylist Kim Hansen was glad even though following the safety protocols take twice as much work.
“It’s almost a half-hour longer just to make sure I'm clean, sanitized, everything's wiped down and all my instruments are disinfected and sanitized between each client,” Hansen told the Southern California Record. “In our industry we work off retention, and if you're not avidly getting your client back in the door, they're going to figure something else out.”
Now that her Monrovia studio, Pure Luxury For Hair, is open for indoor hair services, Hansen is concerned that salons and barbershops will be ordered to shut down again in 21 days depending on COVID-19 statistics.
Kim Hansen, hair stylist in Monrovia
| Kim Hansen
“It’s a fear,” said Hansen in an interview. “I feel like I've got to get everyone in by working seven days a week, 12-hour days, make as much money as I can and retain as many people as I can in case we get shut down again.”
Hansen’s eagerness to work is in response to Los Angeles County Public Health officials announcing Sept. 2 that hair salons and barbershops may begin offering indoor haircuts to a limited number of people, according to a statement online.
“The shampoo part of the service is where both parties are most vulnerable and I would never allow my client to take off their mask,” Hansen said. “My clients personally would never take their mask off and especially during the shampoo because we have face to face contact. It's probably the part of the service that we have the closest face to face contact.”
The California Department of Public Health dashboard reports 732,144 coronavirus cases statewide and 13,709 fatalities, as of Sept. 6. In Los Angeles County alone, 248,000 cases have been reported along with 6,000 deaths.
The order allowing stylists to offer indoor services came within days of reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi received hair salon services indoors without wearing a mask when salons and barbershops were only allowed by the state to offer services outdoors.
“That was a bit hypocritical and she's definitely playing the victim, which is immature for someone in a leadership position especially coming from the state of California and specifically in the San Francisco area,” said Rosey Ibarra, owner of Social Salon Suites in Glendale. “If there are guests that have fancy masks they don't want to get wet during shampooing, we provide them with disposables. So that we can continue servicing our clients the way that is regulated.”
Pelosi responded to the video, which the White House played back to journalists in a loop, saying that she had been set up, according to the Los Angeles Times.
But Ibarra doesn't think there was betrayal or deception underlying Pelosi's mask-less hair wash.
“In a hair salon, a lot of people do feel casual because that's where you get to drop your inhibitions and talk about private things with your hairstylist,” Ibarra told the Southern California Record. “This is something people have been doing for years and it's a safe space. Everybody lets their guard down at some point, and I think Nancy Pelosi just got caught.”