Yeah- so I'm reading the April issue of San Francisco magazine on the L coming home from work the other day and what should I feast my eyes on but an FBI surveillance shot of my local barber, Yuen Poon, and this big article about how the feds raided her brothel on 19th Avenue.

Just when you think this neighborhood is dead...

I've been going to get my haircut at Poon's Hong Kong Hair Salon on Taraval at 17th for years. Poon never really gave me that great of a cut I guess, but hell- it was only $8.00 and quick! At first I never really thought anything was too out of the ordinary at the salon. The staff was always friendly and they always had
an issue of Jane for me to read while getting my haircut. Sure they were always yellin' at each other in Cantonese, but I figured they were just family.

Sometime around 2001 a visiting friend of mine returned from the salon with some suspicion that something was "going on in the back". I had never even realized that there was a "back" to the place. But sure enough I too started to notice some peculiar behavior every time I went in for a cut. For one, everyone in the joint seemed startled every time I walked in. Sure I was the only white boy to seemingly step foot in the place, but there was an air of something peculiar in the way they greeted me. Then I started to notice more and more older Chinese men coming into the salon, some even bald, blurting out abrupt chunks of Cantonese
decree and being motioned to scurry into the back room.

For a longtime I conjectured the scenario to be something as benignly traditional as an illicit gambling den where gamers laid around high in a dreamy fog of opium trying to focus on their cards while hired "company" doted on their every wish. I was partially right. Upon one visit I actually got a glimpse of the inner world when a young Chinese girl appeared out of the back while I was sitting in the barber chair. Her attire could only be described as 80s hooker chic and I was immediately beguiled by the lack of creative fantasy amongst middle-aged Chinese men. But just as sudden as she had appeared, Poon yelled something impetuous at her and she receded back into her lair. At that point I just came to the obvious conclusion that some sort of massage "with benefits" situation was transpiring in the back and that's how I left it.

Well dig this.

As it turns out, Poon was running her own little ho house in the back of the salon and turning a pretty penny in the process. Apparently the operation blew up so big that the little walls of the salon could no longer house the madness and she had to expand the ever-growing enterprise into a 3-bedroom house on 19th
Avenue (right around the corner). She was makin' bank as local johns paid visit day and night to have a sample of the latest product that had been trafficked into the Sunset via a vast and complex sex slave network with roots stretching all the way to rural Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Big Pimpin' in capital
Chinese characters.

But, as often is the case, Poon got a little too confident with the success of her ballin' and her bucket started getting holes in it. Neighbors started getting suspicious, some downright incensed. It wasn't long before someone started whispering in the ear of SF Vice and before you knew it investigators were snooping
around Poon's trash wondering what kind of beast was producing this size payload of condom rappers and empty lube bottles. On a dreary day in January of last year a team of feds decided to find out.

Poon got raided and arrested on charges of housing prostitution and human trafficking. They also arrested 4 naked girls who were chillin' all up in the joint. Some couldn't even speak a word of english. They uncovered all kinds of craziness, including 120K in cash and about 12 johns who happened to pay a visit at the
wrong time. Everybody got hauled downed to Bryant street and when the smoke cleared and the story finally surfaced it was more nefarious in scope than anyone (especially me) had fathomed. We're talking massive Pan-Asian sex-slave operation involving a battery of clandestine recruiters, hundreds of regional
managers with parlors and bordellos peppered all over the states from here to Atlanta. Thousands of women sucked up from all over the eastern pacific rim and shuffled into a pachinko machine-like trafficking industry that confiscates their passports (most of them fake anyway) and drops them into a blurry maelstrom
of stealthy sex-crazed destinations where they're forced to turn tricks and watch Seinfeld all day every day until they can pay off their "debt" and then move out to the Bunny Ranch in Nevada and marry some dim-witted bartender.

Yep.... it's a living.....

Needless to say, I'm looking for a new barber.
I typically like to keep it under $15.00 a cut.

Anyone got any suggestions?