We are a blessed student body. We go to a commuter school in a commuter city whose mayor was able to not pass the BAR in only four tries. Our acclaimed college town, Westwood Village, has won the “Most 13 Year Old Persians on a Friday Night” award for 22 years running. And with alumni that include Jackie Robinson, Jim Morrison, a slew of innovative Nobel laureates, and Jaleel White (the guy who played Urkel), no one can deny the storied tradition that benevolently haunts our grounds.
Just one problem. Most of us aren’t getting spooked. It’s one thing to be shadowed by tradition, it’s something else to notice the shadow and bask in it. On a sprawling, disjointed, uneven campus where students can go four years without ever even seeing whole areas of the place, that special feeling of tradition is as elusive as fart-guilt in a roomful of deniers. This is bound to disappoint those of us who always longed to come to UCLA, and worked extremely hard in high school so we could transfer here from UCSB.
At its best, tradition is a shadow that illuminates rather than darkens—making the emblems off which it reflects all the more necessary. Unseen and unfelt, its benefits are lost. Athletes experience it most easily. Practicing in historical facilities gives them the feeling of following in the foot-drills of their predecessors. And while athletics has always been the most passionate outlet of college tradition, it is now pretty much the only one. Too many academic departments have severed themselves from the tradition of seeking knowledge, for the sake of generating multicultural playgrounds. Athletics still honors the pursuit of achievement. Today, if any Bruin wants to feel part of something old and great, the bleachers are his sole resort.
Where to find this spirit during the hours we don’t spend in Pasadena or Pauley Pavilion? There is, in fact, a de facto Bruin museum whose existence is unknown to the vast majority of students. It’s been around since before UCLA started playing in the Rose Bowl. Oddly enough, it’s located in Westwood Village, where tenants come and go like goose bumps, more ephemeral than an undergraduate career.
To find it, you have to go up a steep, narrow staircase behind a door right next to Elysee on Gayley Ave. All that’s on the door (other than “Hair Stylist” and, beneath that, “Men and Women,” not to mention the street address) are the four letters that spell the name of the curator: K…A…M…I.
***
Chances are I would’ve lasted longer in Marlene Dietrich than the average business lasts in Westwood, but Kami has been in the same building since 1970.
At the time, the best college basketball player in the nation was a big red-headed hippie named Bill Walton. Only his hair stood between him and a major career. Styled too shabbily for Coach Wooden’s tastes, Walton was forced to choose between sideburns and playing time. He biked to Kami to mend the situation, and a proverbial ribbon was cut.
Later, on a faded photo that still hangs on one of the barbershop’s crowded walls, Wooden would thank Kami “for your friendship and for making Bill presentable.”
Since then, many of UCLA’s star athletes, coaches, dance-team beauties, and other characters have trusted Kami to do their dos. Even non-Bruin stars like Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, David Robinson, and Jerry West (a regular whenever he’s in L.A.) attended. They all stare down at you from the gallery-like walls.
“It all started with Bill Walton,” says Kami. “He was my big promoter.”
Which is remarkable. Back then, the notoriously stuttering Walton could hardly promote an answer to “do you want fries with that?”
“Coach Wooden started sending other players over here to get cleaned up, and a trend began.”
If you make an appointment with Kami nowadays, you might be sandwiched between former basketball coach Steve Lavin and current basketball coach Ben Howland. And you might be Dan Guerrero, the man who fired the former and hired the latter. Or you might be Albert Carnasale, the man who hired Guerrero. Or you might be Mitch Kupchak, attempting to explain your disastrous shit-for-Shaq trade. All five are regulars.
“When you walk in there, you’re struck by how it looks like an extension of the UCLA Hall of Fame,” says Lavin, now an ESPN analyst. “Between the autographed basketballs, footballs, hats, pins, photos…over three decades of Bruin athletic tradition have been collected and documented by Kami.”
Knowing that Ben Howland frequents the shop might prompt one to ask, “Why?” Howland usually has more time-outs at his disposal than active follicles—and he calls a lot of time-outs.
“He really enjoys getting his scalp massaged,” says Kami. “Who doesn’t?”
Time for a visit. I can tell by the hairs on my chinny chin chin. They got there from my head. Survivors of at least a couple cuts, these extra-long veterans are Kami’s trademark on the unnegotiable Arfro. As the model male and female faces decorating his walls prove, he has no trouble mowing leaner pastures.
I’m staring at the walls again, the first and last part of every session for the ten years I’ve been coming here. Lavin said that both during his and Jim Harrick’s coaching tenures, recruits were brought into the shop just so they could get a glimpse of those walls. “It gave them a sense of the great history of UCLA athletics.”
To your left, it’s the harassing glare of Tracy Murray! Above you, the familiar smiles of Zidek, Edney, O’Bannon—the tandem that us to our last basketball championship! To your right, the Cameroonian couple who might lead us to our next! Crotch-level, it’s…Jelani McCoy!
And then there’s Kareem Abdul Jabbar with that look, as if to say, “I traded a beautiful name for Allah and all I got were these stupid goggles.”
With all those faces around, I sometimes get the same nervous feeling that PBS talk-show hosts must get once or twice a year—the feeling that you’re being watched. Maybe it’s because over 60 FBI agents patronize the joint. That’s right. If you make your living by smuggling Columbian drugs through underage prostitutes, you don’t want to cross Kami. His pals might find some technicality by which to shut you down.
Once you sit, the countless inscribed photos, memorabilia, patriotic fare, periodic portraits of all his customers and Ronald Reagan blend behind in the mirror. You have a second-story, front-seat view of the northeast corner of Gayley and Kinross, where many coeds must wait to cross the street. The Kami experience ensues.
“If Turkey invaded Armenia from behind, would Greece help out?”
Politics, gossip, sports, jokes, jive, commentary on passers-by…and a deconstruction of the latest Playboy centerfold. We’re following another tradition here—the old-fashioned barbershop as one of the last few places where men can be men, grrrrrrrr. On this autumn afternoon, we are joined in the background by Michelle Malkin discussing the pornography in a senate candidate’s novel. As always, the shop’s television is tuned to Fox News.
Kami tells me about the time he ended up giving Reggie Miller and David Robinson a ride to a Lakers game when they were in the NBA and realizing with horror, half-way there, the insurance implications of his million-dollar passengers. He tells me that he’s the one to thank for Lavin’s slick-gel do. On behalf of every top-level ticket-holder who once needed a makeshift mirror at a game, I thank him.
“What message do you have for the world?” I ask.
“God bless America.”
“Anything else, maybe something juicy?”
“God bless America.”
An amen and a grrrrrrr to that.
***
That the biggest Bruin fan in Westwood is an immigrant who never went to UCLA just goes to show you how tricky tradition can be.
Some would wisely point out that it can be terrible as well as tricky. Slavery, chopsticks, and the USC fight song are just a few terrible ideas to have survived far too long purely on the strength of tradition, and here’s hoping the Bruin Shuffle also dies a Geneva-violating death. Tradition minus thought is nothing more than repetition, which rarely leads anywhere pleasant. Think of “telephone.” Shouldn’t we be surprised that the 8-clap doesn’t end with something like “U-C-L-A Fight, Fight, Fight bumblepuppy asscramp” by now?
Yet for all the feel-good, feel-yourself clichés, the type of tradition talked about in alumni brochures is actually important. Not because it means repetition. After all, alumni don’t buy season tickets to watch reruns from their youth. For most people, the most memorable college experiences can’t be repeated anyway without eventual dismemberment.
College tradition’s biggest value is neither in nostalgia nor hope. In such a rapid-transit phase of life, where one’s expected to shirk his past and prepare for his future, tradition honors the transition itself and complements the rush—providing a perspective that enhances the present. We all know what can happen when young people step into the warp-zone without anything to grip. They can end up dealing with it in some ugly ways, from suicidal hazing to rash activism to unprotected abstinence.
Tradition crystallizes the phase into something we can enjoy forever while still reminding us of the here and now. It’s like other grand man-made stories whose symbols effectively interact with natural drama.
So maybe Kami’s barbershop is less a museum than a specialty theatre. One of the few such theatres left in Bruintown. Its stage may be set with memories, but I’m enjoying them today.