I love to visit the island in mid June, when it's warm and sunny enough for the beach, but just ahead of the end of school, and the madness (and Main Street congestion) that it brings. In June of 1989 I made a token 8-day appearance in my new job at The Discovery Channel, then promptly headed with my wife to the island on a Saturday, for 2 weeks.
Four days earlier the Detroit Pistons "Bad Boys" had swept the L.A. Lakers in the NBA Finals (Series MVP: "Joe Duuuuuuuu-mars!"), gaining revenge on the Lakers in a rematch of the 1988 finals. Although my own allegiance was, and is, to the Celtics, at the time my wife was a die-hard Lakers fan - her father had worked for Jack Kent Cooke at the L.A. Forum in a senior capacity - thus the 1985 and 1987 series had made for some "tense moments"... but I digress.
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| Joe's Barbershop - (508) 325-4091 |
On-island and needing a summer haircut, I found Joanna at Joe's Barber Shop outside town on Pleasant Street, near the windmill. After hearing what I was looking for, Joanna turned around and slapped her hand on a picture taped to the mirror - "Sure you don't want something like this? He was just in here yesterday!" Here was Danny Ainge, who apparently got his hair cut every summer in the same chair I was now sitting in. Now, the week before Danny (traded by Boston late in the '89 season to Sacramento) had no doubt watched the same playoffs as I had, from a similar couch position, so I grabbed his chair and gave it a spin.
"
Let's go for it - give me the Danny Ainge!" Joanna did her magic, and my hair did achieve an ersatz spiky obnoxiousness that I liked for a few days (but couldn't maintain).
I thought fondly of my tufted haircut, and the combative, scrappy Ainge, the following season when, on the Celtics' first Ainge-less appearance at the Forum, CBS Sports and Brent Musburger pointed out a courtside hand-made sign: "We STILL Hate Ainge!!!"
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