GEEZERS WITH RAZORS: A Tale of loss and Rembrance

I live on a little stub of a downtown street, an unremarkable locale except for a recurring ritual that plays out several times a month.  The performance consists of a car rolling down the block and coming to rest in the approximate vicinity of the curb.  The driver - always a gentleman of a certain age - emerges bearing an antique electric shaver and a puzzled expression.  After a few moments of shuffle-footed indecision, the geezer proceeds to the door of a small building clearly labeled LAW OFFICE, there to be greeted by a smiling young woman.  There is a conversation much punctuated by pointing and rueful shrugs after which the geezer climbs into his semi-abandoned car and departs, razor in hand.

What is the meaning of this?  Well, here is the back story.

In the late 70's the iconic marketer/promoter Victor Kermit Kiam bought a business wreckage called the Remington Products Company, producer of the Remington Electric Shaver among other things.  A few months later, Victor's cheerful, guileless mug appeared in TV commercials touting the Remington Shaver.  Victor would declare with signature sincerity, "My wife bought me this Remington Shaver and I liked it so much...I bought the company!"

These commercials had a remarkable effect.  Not only did Remington Shaver sales go ballistic but also electric shaver sales generally.  Victor caused a mighty marketing tide that caused all electric shavers to rise.  He accomplished this by breaking the manly shaving protocol.  You see, Victor was and was considered to be a manly man from an era in which manly men shaved by applying cold, sharp steel to exposed jowls and displayed the resulting wounds (and attached bits of toilet paper) as marks of honour, rather like Heidelberg dueling scars.  In Victor's day only girly men used electric razors.  Thanks to Victor, a whole generation of men found permission to harvest their whiskers electro-mechanically and without any diminution of their precious testosterone reserves.

Around the time that Victor made electric shaving respectable for manly men, a smart guy named Steve opened Small Appliance Repairs on my street.  Steve could fix almost anything electro-mechanical and so people came bearing hurt Hoovers, testy toasters, maimed Mixmasters and yes, sick electric shavers.  For 27 years, men turned to Steve when their treasured shavers malfunctioned and Steve would fix them promptly at modest cost.

Steve prospered, Victor made pots of money and contented men declared their grooming universes to be unfolding splendidly.

But nothing is permanent.  In 1988 Victor departed for The Great Ad Agency in the Sky.  (Where St. Peter is now clean-shaven.)  A few years later, Steve retired to the west coast.  The end of Small Appliance Repairs was memorialized by a forlorn phalanx of expired vacuum cleaners on the sidewalk awaiting the city's weekly junk rapture.   We locals remember it as the Hoovering - a poignant moment.

Steve's old shop has been converted into an elegant, funky law office.  Despite the LAW OFFICE sign the geezers come to the door, antique shavers in hand and depart in sorrow.

We need a monument honouring Victor and Steve, a place where geezers with razors could assemble in manly conclave to share memories of razors past and great moments in shaving.