Dream Bigger
The color of success
Meet Nancy Stamp and Shelby Nance. Stamp’s the one with the red hair, Nance the blue. It’s good that they divvied up the spectrum of primary colors, so that we might distinguish between them.
It would be cheap and obvious to observe that Stamp and Nance stand out in Stephenville. Of course they do. It would also be condescending to Stephenville to say this cheap and obvious thing, because these two would stand out anywhere this side of Soho. That’s what results when you opt for a color of hair that can’t be found in nature, and (in Stamp’s case) tattoo yourself generously and pierce your face in numerous spots. You stand out. People stare.
Then again, when you operate a business called Freakshow Salon, this look might be called “marketing.”
The salon celebrated its first anniversary earlier this month. Stamp and Nance opened it after growing tired of working for other salon owners. Before that had been some tough stretches for both: The many years Nance spent waitressing, and the dispiriting time Stamp endured as a single mother on public assistance. “It’s only been four years from welfare to a business,” Stamp says.
The salon’s name originated in a bar, where the pair tend to hold their business meetings. The thinking was that they might as well cop to reality. Seems like a smart move. I don’t think they’d have been able to pull off “Salon d’Elegance” with a straight face.
Stamp and Nance report that a surprising number of their clients are women who could be categorized as (and these are my words) “good Baptist ladies.” One client, a prominent citizen, admits that she can’t even bring herself to write the business name on her checks after a haircut; she makes it out to FS Salon.
If I had enough hair to require maintenance, I’d be a client. Freakshow is small, but interesting. There are a dozen or so water-filled wine bottles, each with a single fish swimming around inside. Marilyn Monroe is much in evidence, along with a healthy collection of old-school pinups. Various hairstyles found in the pages of a 1940s Sears catalog decorate one wall. Also, there’s a no-gossip rule. “Salons can be very catty,” Stamp says.
Freakshow is so busy these days that a third staffer has been hired to (wo)man the shampoo sink. Funny thing, though: Her hair is its natural color.
“We can’t be discriminatory,” Nance says. “We had to hire somebody normal.”
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