Puttin’ on the Rinse at Sid’s Unique

There is nothing subtle about the perfume of perm fumes. Walk into a beauty parlor and the nostrils are assaulted by a chemical soup concocted in the spirit that the ends justify the means. And those ends, it is hoped, won’t be split.

Stylists today may offer ammonia-free solutions that advertise such scents as French lavender, Turkish rose and Chinese eucalyptus. But Sidney Kaseman, proprietor of Unique Coiffures in Reseda, seems not so displeased by a smell he compares to rotten eggs. It could even be said he loves the smell of ammonia in the morning. It smells like . . . money.

Not a lot of money, but enough. Kaseman charges nothing close to Cristophe or Jose Eber. But it’s been a living--and virtually a life.

Sid Kaseman, 79, has been doing do’s for more than 60 years now. He enrolled in beauty college in June 1936, and earned his cosmetician’s license in early 1937. World War II transformed him into an Army radio operator and a barber; the charge was 15 cents a haircut, with a dime going to the camp fund and a nickel to Sid. His clientele today includes a few ladies who’ve sought his services since the Eisenhower administration, when he first opened shop in the San Fernando Valley, not far from his present location on Sherman Way.

Step inside and, save for the magazines, it’s something like the 1960s, a beauty parlor more than a salon. On some days, the spacious room still bustles with activity. Nine cosmeticians work here, including five independent operators who rented their stations after the Northridge earthquake.

On this particular day, however, there is only Sid and 78-year-old Flavia Henderson, who needs her hair done before a trip back East. The shampoo, set, trim and permanent wave will cost her $60 and about 2 1/2 hours of time. The chemical aroma is strong as Sid rolls Flavia’s hair into neat furrows, an early step in the process.

“You’re looking at a master at work,” Flavia says. “I’m not fooling. He’s that good.”

Sid accepts the compliment with a grin and jokes about how he’s going to make her look like Martha Washington. He is a neat, trim man who stands 5 feet, 3 inches tall and coifs his own gray locks with a striking flourish. A part reaches all the way back to his collar.

“Sometimes people say, ‘Oh, the back of your head is beautiful.’ It’s embarrassing. Maybe I ought to start walking backwards.”

Sid has his quips and tales from the trenches of beauty, but a raconteur he is not. “I’m probably a better listener than I am a talker.” This is a fine skill in his line of work.

Rather than describe all that his duties entail, Sid points to a document framed over another stylist’s station, an homage titled “What Is a Hairdresser?”

A hairdresser is a complexity dedicated to beautifying hair: She bends it, bleaches it, tints it, tones it, washes it, waves it, teases it, combs it. . . .

The hairdresser, the unsigned tribute continues, is “Joan of Arc with sore feet.” And so much more:

To her customers she is Psychiatrist, Psychoanalyst, Advice to the Lovelorn, Tax Consultant, Marriage Counselor, Fashion Coordinator and just plain friend. . . .

Sid doesn’t seem to mind the implicit sexism. It was an unusual career path for a man in 1937. What few male hairdressers there were, Sid notes, were gay and worked for the movie studios.

The way Sid tells it, he’d come out of Huntington Park High School with the Depression in full swing. His family had chickens for eggs, a goat for milk, a garden for vegetables. Sid was looking for work and courting Elaine Freidman when Elaine’s sister told him he looked like a hairdresser she knew. That, Sid says, got him thinking.

He’d always been good working with his hands, but when Sid knocked on the door of a local beauty college, he was told that only women were welcome. He got a friendlier reception downtown at the Polytechnic Beauty College, which, fortunately for Sid, was experiencing equipment troubles.

“They said, ‘Well, if you can take care of the permanent wave machines, we’ll let you work your way through.’. . . I was the only fella in the class, by the way.”

His education was sometimes by trial and error. Once he was giving a subject a test curl and let her cook a little too long under the dryer. When he removed the roller, her hair came with it. Luckily, Sid says, she had a thick mane and was never the wiser.

Before long Sid had both a vocation and a wife. He and Elaine are now approaching their 58th wedding anniversary. The celebrants will include their two children, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Sid provides these details as he snips away at the work in progress. Flavia Henderson is not one of Sid’s longtime customers. She turned to Sid a few years ago after her hairdresser at the time passed away. “I looked over everyone here and I thought, ‘Well, it has to be Sid.’ ”

They reminisce about the Los Angeles they once knew, with its street cars and the Miracle Mile and movie stars strolling down Hollywood Boulevard. Sid listens as she talks about her late husband, Bob, a gaffer for Twentieth Century Fox, and how they traveled to Italy when he worked on “Cleopatra.”

“God, we’re getting old,” she says.

“I don’t say old,” Sid replies. “The word is mature.”

Soon Sid moves Flavia under the hood of a dryer.

Once upon a time these shops were a social hub for young women with children in school and husbands who expected dinner ready when they arrived home from work. The permanent was part ritual, part uniform. Lifestyles and hairstyles have changed. Perms ain’t what they used to be, Sid says. “That’s why these kind of shops are dying out.”

There is a hint of melancholy in his tone. When people ask Sid when he plans to retire, he often responds with gallows humor. “When my customers and I die. All at the same time. That’s it.”

But Sid Kaseman says that, in all seriousness, he feels he’s got another decade’s worth of do’s in his educated hands.

He brightens at the notion that styles that are “out” have a way of coming back in. If the younger generation wants something retro, well. . . .

“I’ll be here to do it for them.”

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at [email protected] Please include a phone number.