We all started for different reasons. Get a better shave. Eliminate ingrown hairs. We enjoy the ritual of putting a brush to your face. To shave like our grandfathers and fathers did.

But little do you realize that members of the wet shaving community at the forefront of some of the emerging trends in our popular culture.

It’s easy being green.
Compared to our cartridge and shaving goo brethren we safety razor users are more environmental conscious. Let start with the razor. The environmental footprint of a safety razor user is significantly less than someone who uses cartridges or worst yet disposable razors. I have three years of accumulated blades which only have filled 1/3 of a 20 ounce soda bottle. Compare that with three years worth of disposable razors or cartridges. The difference is considerable. Our razor stays in the medicine cabinet or on the shelf. Not in the landfill. Also factor in the energy used to create a double edge or single edge blade and compare that to the cartridge with multiple materials or a disposable with a plastic handle.
Let’s turn to cream and soaps. Most of the artisan soaps we purchase come in minimal packing. Cream may be packaged in plastic but in many instances we reused the packaging for other products. A tub of cream may last 3 to 6 months. A canned cream or gel user may go through 4 to 6 cans during the same period.

We’re Internet Entrepreneurs

Some of us have turned our hobby into thriving businesses. From JoAnna here at the Shave Den and the other soap merchants, to Rudy Vey who produces some exceptional brushes to the other vendors too numerous to mention (and I don’t want to leave anyone out unintentionally) who search the world to bring us the best in blades, creams, soaps, aftershaves, brushes, and razors.

We practice Random Acts of Kindness

PIF. Just read the forum threads. We are a generous lot sharing our knowledge, finds, and shaving stash with others.

We’re Pickers

One of the most popular shows right now on cable TV feature pickers who unearth treasures in others junk and at fleas markets, estate sales, yard sales, and antique stores. America is catching on to what many of us have been doing for years.


We Repurpose

We search the Goodwill looking for latte cups, small onion soap tureens, or any other item which will serve us well to mix lather in. We find old dusty razors in antique stores and put them back in service. We find uses for our empty shaving tubs. We find old discarded shaving brushes and resurrect them with a new knot and some TLC.

We do DIY Projects
From brush restoration, soap making, home made aftershave, skin food, razor racks, and complete shave den design we have some vary creative people here. Just click on the Inside the Den link from the Forum main menu.

We are a special bunch of people. We are passionate about our hobby. Creative. Entrepreneurial. Generous. Thrifty. And some of the best groomed and best smelling folks in the world.
__________________
Tom

Blood.

Why did there have to be so much blood? There is no way I can get all of this cleaned up before Mom gets home, thought Levi as he surveyed the sink and counter. He did not intend on making a mess; he just wanted to be like Dad and shave like a Man. Now he was going to have to Man up, admit what he did, and probably get a whoopin’ for getting into Dad’s shave kit. Levi’s Dad Vic was a nice Man, a fair Man even, but Vic was also a firm believer in discipline. Levi’s backside still remembered the trouble he got into when took a shovel from the tool shed intending to dig a hole to China. Obedience was paramount in the Del Vecchio household.

Levi looked around the gleaming white tiled bathroom for an inspirational way out of this jam, finding nothing more than towels as white and fresh as the wind driven snow. For some reason, Rachel (Levi’s Mom) insisted on stocking nothing but white towels in the white bathroom, so there was no way Levi could use the towels to clean up the mess and hope to get away with it. Desperate for a solution, Levi grabbed the spare roll of toilet paper kept in the little cabinet next to the sink and began to wipe up all of the water and blood collected in the sink and on the counter. Levi giggled to himself as a flashback of a similar mess came to mind. Last week, at her tenth birthday party, Levi’s Sister Holly had been eating her birthday cupcake, washing it down with gulps of Fanta Strawberry Soda Pop, when all of a sudden she sneezed, sending reddish pink rivulets of soda pop flying everywhere. Holly was lucky that her party was outside on the back porch instead of in the white carpeted dining room.

Levi finished cleaning up his mess and was sure to flush the now quite pink toilet paper down the commode. Levi then thoroughly rinsed out his Dad’s shave brush, dutifully squeezing out all of the water and shaking the remaining water out of the brush before slapping it back and forth on the shave towel kept by the sink. The shave towel was a gift to Vic from Rachel. Rachel had spent hours cross stitching a pattern resembling a shave brush and razor into the linen towel, presenting it to Vic fourteen years ago as a Father’s Day present on the day she announced that she was pregnant with Levi, their first child and only Son. Levi then turned his attention to the object of his greatest fascination, his Dad’s razor. To say it was Levi’s Dad’s razor is a bit inaccurate. The razor actually had belonged to Levi’s Grandpa Leo. Grandpa Leo had bought the Schick Injector I-2 “Hydro Magic” brand new down at the Five & Dime on Main Street way back in 1957, on the very same day that he bought his new Chevy. Leo figured “Hey! I Have A New Car, I Need A New Razor!” Leo shaved with the Schick every day until he passed away peacefully at the ripe old age of Eighty-Five and then the razor became the daily shaver of Levi’s Dad Vic.

Levi loved to stand at his Dad’s side and watch him shave for as long as he could remember, dutifully mimicking his Dad’s movements with his “Lil Shaver Set” that he had gotten for Christmas one year. Now that Levi was fourteen, he had long outgrown the Lil Shaver Set and was actually starting to sprout a little shadow on his lip and he wanted to shave like his Dad. Levi had asked his Dad many times if he was old enough to shave yet, and could he try the Schick, but time and time again Vic would say “Son, shaving is Man’s work, come back and ask me again when you are a Man.” Each time that Vic would utter these words to Levi, they stung a little, but it gave Levi a lot to look forward to and so he would go back to watching Vic shave, committing the movements and angles to memory, filing them away until the day came that he would finally be able to shave. It was such sweet torture. Levi wanted to shave more than he wanted a new bike, or even a driver’s license, which seemed to be a coon’s age away.

Levi woke himself up screaming.

Again.

It was “The Dream.”

The Dream had become more and more frequent these days. As Levi sat in bed, soaked with sweat, huffing and puffing trying to catch his breath, he wrapped his arms around himself, trying to control the rib cracking waves of sobs that welled up from way deep inside his body. Levi missed his Dad so very much.

Vic did not come home that night so long ago when Levi was struggling to clean up the bathroom. What Levi would not give to have had to fess up to his Dad and admit that he had been in the shave kit and having to accept a whoopin’ for breaking the rules of the house, the least of which was to stay out of other peoples things.

Vic was a giant of a man, standing six and a half feet tall, with a great big barrel chest and thick, ropey muscled arms. Vic was an exemplary Officer on the Police Force. Vic had survived Vietnam and many years on the Police Force, never having to draw his gun. Vic was adept at talking his way through sticky situations, but he was gunned down in...