Barber Queens Park London: NW6 to W9

A barber Queens Park London search reaches us from any of the three separate places that share the name. The shop is Golden Scissors, number 354 on Harrow Road, W9. From the station on Salusbury Road it is one bus, the 36, which terminates there and runs the whole length of Harrow Road. From the Queen's Park Estate it is a flat walk along our own street. Here is which is which, what the journey actually costs you, and what to ask for at the other end.

A barber Queens Park London search covers three places

Three things in this corner of London answer to Queen's Park, and they are not as close together as one shared name suggests.

The park. Twelve hectares off Harvist Road in NW6, opened on 5 November 1887 and still run by the City of London Corporation, which looks odd on a map, the City itself being five miles east. The Corporation bought the ground in 1886, a slice of the field that had held the Royal Agricultural Show seven years before, and the name came from Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. The bandstand is the original. There is a pitch-and-putt course and a petanque pitch, which tells you what kind of park it is.

The neighbourhood. The streets either side of Salusbury Road, with the station at the southern end of it. Zone 2, Bakerloo line, and the Lioness line of the Overground. This is what most people are picturing.

The Queen's Park Estate. W10 rather than NW6, and this is the one that concerns us. In 1874 the Artizans, Labourers and General Dwellings Company bought six fields on the north side of Harrow Road, just east of where Kilburn Lane runs into Ladbroke Grove, and put up a grid of terraced cottages for working families. The streets running north to south were numbered instead of named: First Avenue through to Sixth. The whole thing was finished by 1885 and most of it is still standing.

So the answer to "how far is the barber" depends entirely on which one you meant. If your address has an Avenue in it, we are a walk along Harrow Road away. If you are up by the station, you are a bus ride away and the bus is a good one.

One bus does the whole journey

The 36. It starts at Queen's Park station and runs south through Maida Hill and down Harrow Road on its way to Victoria and eventually New Cross Gate. Number 354 sits between two of its stops. There is no change to make, it runs around the clock, and through the day there is one every six to twelve minutes. If you are coming from Salusbury Road, stop reading this section.

The Bakerloo. Three stops south, through Kilburn Park and Maida Vale, and off at Warwick Avenue. Warwick Avenue to our door is twelve minutes on foot, a shade under a kilometre. We have measured both routes off that station and written them up, including the one that takes you past the moored narrowboats. It beats the bus when Harrow Road is solid and loses to it when the road is clear.

On foot. From the station to our door is about 1.4 kilometres as the crow flies, but nothing between here and there runs in a straight line. Down Salusbury Road, over Kilburn Lane, then south and east to pick up Harrow Road. Budget closer to half an hour than twenty minutes and you will not be disappointed.

From the Avenues it is a different proposition. You are already on Harrow Road, it is flat from end to end, and there are no turnings to remember.

The cut that suits the distance

This is the bit we would want to know if we were the one doing the travelling. How far away you live should change which haircut you ask for, and it almost never comes up in the chair.

We publish our honest intervals cut by cut, so the arithmetic is easy to do. A skin fade peaks around day ten and wants the chair back every fortnight. Turn that into journeys and a skin fade from Salusbury Road is roughly 26 round trips a year. A taper fade, sharp at three weeks and still tidy at four, is nearer fifteen. A standard haircut at four weeks is thirteen. A longer scissor cut, shaped so that it grows into something rather than out of it, holds five to six weeks, so you are down to nine or ten trips and most of a year back.

Twenty-six bus journeys against ten is not a small difference, and it is worth knowing before the clippers are on rather than in February when you have stopped bothering.

None of that is an argument against fades. The skin fade is the cut we do more of than any other, and nobody here will talk you out of one you like. It is an argument for being straight about how often you are realistically going to make that journey, because a skin fade stretched to five weeks is not a skin fade that has lasted, it is a different haircut that you did not order. If you want the week-by-week version of how one ages, we wrote that up properly.

Tell us the distance when you sit down. "I am coming from Queen's Park and I can get here about once a month" changes what we cut, and it changes it for the better.

What it costs, and the Sunday version

Nothing gets added at the counter, so this is what you actually hand over.

The four cuts that section was really about are £15 for a haircut in a half-hour slot, £17 for a skin fade or a taper fade in forty minutes, and £15 again for the longer scissor cut, because that is the same half-hour haircut with more left on top rather than a dearer service. The two short ones men ask for most sit under all of those: £14 for a short back and sides in twenty minutes, and £10 for a crew cut in the same twenty. A beard trim is £11 on its own and £2 less alongside any haircut, which puts a cut and a beard at £24.

Head shaves, wash and cuts, the over-60s rate, the hot towel finish and the moustache trim are all on the services page with the time each one holds a chair.

The doors are open 9:00am to 7:30pm Monday through Saturday, and 10:00am to 6:30pm on a Sunday. If you are coming from the park end, Sunday is the one to plan around. The park is at its best in the morning, the 36 runs all day and all night, and a half-hour chair in the afternoon sits either side of that without anybody hurrying. Six chairs go at once here, so a booked slot starts when it says it will.

The stretch to avoid without a booking is Saturday from late morning, and the back end of a weekday when men arrive off shift. From Third Avenue a wait costs you a walk home. From Salusbury Road it costs you the round trip, which is why it is worth pinning the slot down before you set off rather than after.

One thing worth sorting before you get on the bus. Have two answers ready: how short the sides go, and whether the back gets a squared line or follows the hairline you already have. Those two cover most of what we need, and the rest we can work out together once you are sitting down.

Then, before you leave, ask whoever cut you how long they would leave it. The answer depends on your hair and on what you have just had done, not on a rule, and it is the number your whole journey should be planned around.