The camera is up over the mirror, looking across the shop at the waiting bench and the front door. The three chairs are along the bottom of the picture. My chair is the one on the right, by the door.

1. Count the heads on the bench.
2. Figure fifteen minutes each, divided up among however many chairs are going. Flattops take a little longer. Boys take a little longer too, depending on the boy.
3. If a man is standing by the door, he is waiting too. Count him.
4. If the bench is empty, come on down. If the bench is full on a Saturday morning, go get a cup of coffee first. That is what the regulars do.

The camera only sees the shop. It can't hold your place. First come, first served, the same as always.

My name is Allen Mak. I was born here in Sacramento in 1935 and I have been cutting hair since 1957, when I finished barber college and went to work for another man's shop downtown. In 1968 I opened my own place on Alder Street with three chairs I bought used from a shop that was closing. They are the same three chairs. The pumps have been rebuilt twice, but they are the same chairs, and they will outlast me.

In thirty-one years I have cut the hair of a lot of boys who came back with their own boys, and a few who came back with their grandsons. The prices have changed. The haircut hasn't. We do a good regular cut, a square flattop, a clean fade, and we still do a real hot-towel shave with a straight razor, which some young men have never had and should try once.

My wife Dorothy kept the books for the shop for many years, and she says the camera was the first new thing in here since the cash register.

This was my grandson Gabriel's idea. He is a junior at Sacramento State studying computers, and he got tired of hearing customers say they drove down on a Saturday, saw the bench full, and drove home again. In January 1999 he put a small camera up over the mirror and hooked it to an old computer in the back room, with a program he picked out that sends a new picture to this page every minute. I don't know the name of the program. Gabriel takes care of it. He also made this page, but the words are mine.

The camera only looks at the bench and the door. It does not look at the chairs from the front, so nobody's haircut is on the Internet until he walks out the door with it.

• "Just a little off the top." (It is never just a little.)
• "Same as last time." (I remember. Some of you, I remember back to 1968.)
• "Is the bench full? I'll come back." (Now you can look first.)
• "Don't let my wife see the back." (Too late, she sees it on the camera.)
• "How about those Kings." (We have been saying this since 1985, and we will keep saying it.)
• "You still use that razor?" (Yes.)

Gabriel saves the good ones. Here is a busy one and a slow one.