And for some reason, when it comes to local shops and stores, puns are always the go-to method when the owner wants to raise the cleverness bar. For example, there's the accountant who named his business ?Brass Tax? ? not to mention the self-explanatory ?Royal Flush Cesspool Sewer & Drain Cleaning? ? and the inviting Canadian fast-food chicken place, ?Lick-A-Chick.?

The ante is always upped when the pun is combined with deliberate bad spelling. And this happens on a national level. There's ?Rite-Aid,? the drugstore chain, ?Qwest,? the phone company, and ?Tastee Freez,? the ice cream franchise.

But frankly, there is only one all-time champion when it comes to continually combining bad spelling and outrageous puns ? and that's the barbershop and hair salon industry.

Think of ?A Cut Above.? Or ?Hair and Now.? Or ?Hair We Are.? You get the idea. There are so many different bad barbershop and salon names, that there are endless opportunities to categorize them. For instance, maybe classic rock is in your groove. Then go with ?The Grateful Head,? ?Hairway to Heaven,? or just a generic ?Choice Cuts.? Or perhaps you like classic movies? Try ?Dye Hard,? ?From Hair to Eternity? or ?Best Little Hair House!?

Of course, there's also classic literature, where you can invoke ?Julius Scissors,? ?Ali Barber? ?ShearLocks Homes? or defy the Romans with the rallying cry, ?I'm Sparti-Cuts.?

Maybe you just want to pretend you're not a barbershop. No problem! Try ?The Locks Smith,? ?The Hair Port,? ?Hair O'Dome? or ?Hair Force One.? Better yet ? don't!

Why hair equals hilarity for the barbershop owners who resort to these painful names isn't quite clear. What is clear is there is an apparently endless list of them already in use.

If you don't believe that, here's just a few names actually in use here in the good ol? USA: American Hair Lines, Clip Joint, Clippity Do Da, Cliptomania, Cut Me Loose, Cutter Shark, The Cutting Edge, The Hair-After, Hair Apparent, Hair Loom, Hair-O-Dynamics, Hairoscope, Hair of Respectability, Hair To Stay, Hairs Johnny, Hair-Riffic, Hairs To You, Heads You Win, Locks of Luck, The Mane Attraction, Mane Street, The Million Hairs, Now Hair This, Shear Delight, Shear Happiness, Shear Joy, Shear Luck, Shears To You, Soul Scissors, Upper Cuts?and for all of you who fondly remember Joe DiMaggio?The Yankee Clipper.

Had enough? We thought so. That's why, when it came time to name our barber club franchise, we went through Shear Torture. But Hair's the Thing ? in the end, we knew we wanted to have a name that actually meant something.

Copyright (c) 2009 Kennedy's All-American Club