LG SOTD 09Jun2024
- Brush: Omega S10005 - 24mm boar synthetic #OLDWORLD
- Razor: Karve - Christopher Bradley SB-C (Copper)
- Blade: Wizamet - Super Iridium (5)
- Lather: West Coast Shaving (Duck Fat) - Pear-brrr Shoppe
- Bowl: CaYuen - Dark Nebula, large
- Post Shave: Afta by Mennen - Aftershave Lotion, Original
Happy Sunday, beautiful people! Welcome to the ninth shave of the 2024 Lather Games. Today's theme is “Shave and Haircut - Two Bits” where we shave with a barbershop themed lather.
I am using West Coast Shaving’s Pear-brrr Shoppe in their duck fat base. The packaging is the only description of this scent and part of why I haven’t found a good reason to place an order with WCS since back in 2021.
“A cooling fruit barbershop scent”
Cooling 🤔
There is not now, nor has there ever been, a cooling agent in this soap. I bought my tub three years ago and they still have the same packaging featured on their website. They also still have no standalone scent description or notice that the soap is not, in fact, cooling. That’s the sort of professionalism and attention to detail that does not engender customer loyalty 😉
That aside, it is a lightly fruity clean scent in the broad genre of clean smelling scents that get shoved under “barbershop”. The base itself is essentially a less expensive - for WCS that is, they’re still charging HoM and BaM tier prices to us - version of Chicago Grooming’s Darkwing base (WCS is another brand they produce under contract). The scent isn’t quite spot on for pear but it’s close enough that the punny name half works at least.
Using my #OLDWORLD brush, a beechwood handled Omega S-Brush with a synthetic boar knot. This is an interesting knot as it does mimic some of the physical splay & scrub of boar bristles, though not much else. I think the fibers would work better in a larger diameter knot than this one.
Since the razor is a repeat from day one, may as well take a moment to sing the praises of the CaYuen bowls. Is it a stupendously expensive shave bowl? Oh, yes - with taxes it was over $90 for the large size. If I could go back in time would I buy it again? Yes, no hesitation.
Unbreakable with a perfectly sized and grippable base that opens up into a 6” diameter, shallow bowl with an overhanging lip and raised spirals. The weight balances perfectly stable in my hands and the shallow but wide bowl lets me go to town with any brush I’ve got with zero handle banging. If I can’t coax a base into a lather I like with this, to hell with that base. The unique patterns from the mica powders used in the urethane is just a bonus. I’m ruined for any more pedestrian lather bowls going forward, good thing it’s largely indestructible under normal use 😅
——
I heard there was a quiz… and that was challenging and more than a bit silly. At least for me 😅
I don’t often remember marketed notes, I remember what I smell, and then figure in that I haven’t even tried seventeen of the quiz scents, and only use five regularly… well, this was not a passing score: 9/32
I felt particularly doofy missing Alive and Rawr, both of which I use regularly and would have picked out, if I’d gotten that far instead of scrunching up my brain to remember some obscure sample description on Maggard’s site 🤤
——
It has been a while since I used this soap (Lather Games 2022?) and today I realized that this is totally HoM Alive’s annoying little sibling. The bases have similarities - both are based around duck fat as the animal fat, both are mixed and packaged under contract by Chicago Grooming (I am assuming there is a large duck processing plant in Illinois based on the pattern 🤓), and the pear and green apple notes that lead these soaps are very similar. The performance of the WCS-DF base is solid, though, can’t argue with results. Alive is a considerably more complex scent that has stuff going on. Pear-brrr Shoppe would work great as a car air freshener, clean and boring.
I don’t generally like barbershop scents, something which this early purchase started me on the path of learning. Only “barbershop” soap in rotation is Ghost Town Barber and it isn’t very representative of the genre. Plus, any fragrance with a noticeable “talc” or a “powdery accord” is a nope - and guess what a lot of barbershop scents have?
Non-exciting scent aside, the shave was fantastic. I am loving the new C-plate in the Christopher Bradley. Getting just as close a shave as with the D-plate but not removing the top layer of epidermis with the hair. The three horsemen are complete.
Enjoy what’s left of your weekend!