The Hari’s Experience

Hari’s is more than just a hairdressers. Along with your usual cut and blow dry, the new branch on King’s Road in Chelsea is also an art gallery and venue with a Courvoisier bar. Customers can sit down at a piano, in front of a 1960s Mini or a red phone box designed by sculptor Walter Raes, who’s work was once described by Isabella Blow as ‘avant garbage’.

The boutique salon hosts live music and a resident DJ – when I went to check it out last Saturday there was a live jazz saxophonist. They offer caviar treatments and Brazilian blow dries, which I hear are fantastic, but I decided to keep it simple with a cut and blow dry. I booked in with Sarah, who gave me a brand new shoulder-length crop and the best blow dry I’ve ever had – it survived an entire Saturday night on the dance floor.

Why can’t every salon experience be like this?

Andy Willsher: The Black and White Collection

Andy Willsher is responsible for some of the most iconic rock and indie photographs of the last two decades. Since he started working for the NME in 1993, he’s shot artists including Blur, Oasis, Amy Winehouse,U2, Paul Weller, Morrissey, Arcade Fire, The Prodigy and The Libertines.

After he’d built a portfolio with images of late 80′s goth bands that played his hometown Bedford, Willsher moved to London. He worked in a bank to pay for a new camera then took it on tour with a band called The Hollow Men. It was then he knew he had to be a rock photographer so once he’d returned Willsher began sending his photos to music magazines, hoping they’d use them. Eventually the NME got in touch. Now he’s one of their top photographers.

Willsher is known for his eye-popping images that represent a history of big acts that have graced the UK. From early Blur to U2′s 360 tour promo shots, Oasis on the pitch before they played Wembley and Pete Doherty sharing a mic with Carl Barat.

Willsher’s recent work in monochrome holds the same status in music photography history, with a photo of Pete Doherty in a flat with ‘Libertines forever’ scrawled on the wall, Mumford & Sons playing their instruments in a boat and that shot of Bono jumping in the air. This is his best collection yet. Why? Because everyone looks better in black and white. Even rock stars.

Go and see The Black and White Collection. It’s at The Book Club on Leonard St, Shoreditch until 31 December.

Retro Bowling: All Star Lanes

The walls of All Star Lanes are adorned with retro bowling balls, shirts and bags. The decor is strictly 1950s and there’s an American-style diner that serves milkshakes made with Reese’s peanut butter cups. It’s like stepping 60 years back in time to a bowling alley in the U.S. Even the waitresses are dressed in bubblegum-pink 1950s-style dresses.

Luckily for us Londoners, this is an underground bowling joint in Holborn, not downtown Austin. And All Star Lanes can also be found in Bayswater and Brick Lane. Keep an eye out for events – the alleys have hosted a La Roux DJ set and the Noisettes will be hitting the Brick Lane decks on 19th November.

There’s a deal on with record store Rough Trade at the moment – if you show your wristband from an in-store gig at the Brick Lane branch after 6pm between Monday – Wednesday, you get 50% off food and 30% off drinks.

But a word of warning if you’re an amateur like me – this place is too cool to be seen bowling with the sides up.

Ever Young: James Barnor

James Barnor took his first photograph aged 17, on a plastic Kodak Brownie 127 given to him by his teacher. At 20 he set up his own portrait studio in Accra, then at 21 he became one of the first photojournalists in Ghana when he landed a job at the country’s first quotidian newspaper, The Daily Graphic. Barnor moved to London in 1959 and spent the sixties shooting fashion for Africa’s leading magazine at the time, Drum.

Ever Young, named after his Accra studio, is the first exhibition to span Barnor’s entire career. It includes his early portraits of family and friends plus images for The Daily Graphic – of politicians and boxers alike. But the most vibrant are his fashion shots, of African models who lived in the UK, wearing oh-so-sixties clothes in oh-so-London settings like in front of a red phone box or leaving a tube station.

Barnor never chose his subjects and worked entirely from commissions so he could pay the bills. But his images – of Ghanian politicians fighting for independence and of young black models in London – mark a historical progression to modernity and multiculturalism.

I was lucky enough to catch up with Barnor before the exhibition. Check out my work for NOWNESS, to find out more about his subjects and his career.

Ever Young is on at Rivington Place in Shoreditch until 27 November.