NoodleClips

Mild day, not excessively busy. Didn’t have a $5 Dominick’s pizza today, in spite of what I wrote yesterday. Lilly said she didn’t want any. Even at seven, you sometimes burn out on things.

Visited two new retail concepts lately, new in the sense that I’d never tried them, and in a more global sense. They’re both growing young chains. First, noodles. Then hair. Despite similarities in shape between those things, the shops were very different.

Ann and I had lunch at Noodles & Co. in Arlington Heights, Ill., a few weeks ago. The place was wombish. Pastel walls, soft brown tables, soft track lighting, an enclosing—but not claustrophobic—interior space that happened to be a noodle-focused restaurant.

Lunch there was the very last lagniappe of my former job at Real Estate Media. In early March (see the March 2-4 postings), I went to Grand Rapids for a retail conference, and for a while listened to a fellow from Noodles & Co. I can’t remember a thing he said now. But at the end of his presentation, he gave members of his small audience postcard-sized gift certificates for a free entrée at the restaurant chain.

All along the Noodles & Co. walls were photos with black frames. Each one, large and glossy and colorful, had food or food establishment as a subject: an open-air market in Seattle, baskets of peppers in Bangkok. The food equivalent of wildlife shots that lull one into thinking that the wilderness is full of picturesque creatures at every turn.

Speaking of Thailand, I had the pad thai, which was really pretty good. I ordered macaroni and cheese for Ann, but she preferred to eat from my plate, so I ended up eating most of hers. It was several cuts above the boxed variety, as you might expect.

On my birthday I went by myself to a place called SportClips for a haircut. Sam the barber downtown is just a little far away now, and besides, I wrote an article about SportClips a few months ago, so I decided to give it a try.

The concept assumes that men and boys think about sports pretty much all the time, or would if they could. The place has tiles like a locker room, sports photos and memorabilia, and one TV for each of half a dozen barber chairs, tuned into one of the ESPNs. Seemed like overkill to me. Enough to have one big TV off in the corner, broadcasting whatever sport is in season.

A young woman cut my hair. All the staff were young women, and if you read between the lines at SportClips web site, the chain seems to recruit them from beauty parlor jobs with the promise of somewhat better working conditions and pay, and especially the prospect of customers who are easy to please, that is, men and boys. I think they’re on to something.

My haircutter wasn’t bad, but she was noticeably ham-handed compared to Sam the barber. After the cut, however, was the shampoo, and that was worth the price alone (about $15 with tip, incidentally). More barber shops ought to do that.