BY RYAN E. SMITH
BLADE STAFF WRITER
I love living in a manly town. Say what you want about Toledo, it is unquestionably full of testosterone.
If it wasn't obvious from the popularity of the annual Toughman contests or the monster truck rallies, a recent study by the research group Sperling's BestPlaces has confirmed it. Released earlier this month, it ranks Toledo 10th in the nation when it comes to manliness.
So chug a beer, pound your chest, and celebrate the fact that we came out ahead of Cleveland and way ahead of those latte-drinking, quiche-eating guys in New York City, which ended up last among the 50 metropolitan areas surveyed. (Nashville topped the list.)
The thinking goes like this: Real men watch NASCAR, drive pickups, eat at Hooters, and subscribe to Maxim. The number crunchers analyzed magazine subscriptions, restaurants, home improvement stores, vehicle purchases, professional sport teams, and more.
Cities lost points for "emasculating criteria" like minivans, sushi restaurants, and subscriptions to Martha Stewart Living. No word on whether Jamie Farr's cross-dressing on M*A*S*H hurt Toledo.
Reading the survey made me wonder what it really means to be a man these days. There must be more to it than this or even knowing the last five Super Bowl MVPs, the most important guitarists in history, and the top beer brands worldwide (all included in The Man Book by Otto DeFay, which sits proudly in my basement "man cave" where I watch sports — when my wife doesn't need the space for yoga).
I decided to seek some help, and what better place to find it than that old-fashioned bastion of masculinity, the barber shop? I headed over to Headlines in West Toledo for a question and manswer session with owner and longtime barber Mike Keller.
Evidence of manliness was all around me. The magazine rack was stuffed with Popular Mechanics. The walls were peppered with pictures of motorcycles. There were no women or kids, just Mike talking with a customer about the 27-inch walleye his son had caught that day. All that was missing was a centerfold tacked to the ceiling.
And yet, there was something unexpected about things. When Mike turned on the radio, it didn't pump out classic rock or country; it was jazz. Other surprises surfaced later: At a time when most guys are anxiously following men's college basketball games as part of March Madness, Mike admitted to enjoying the women's game too. He also confided that he's been teased for having white legs.
It reminded me that there's more to real men than hunting and power tools. After all, jazz is the essence of cool, women's athletics are sports too, and when you're busy doing manly things — never, ever in short shorts — you don't have time to tan your legs.
The revelation hit me as Mike cut my hair, and suddenly I was filled with satisfaction to be in such a manly setting, a place where a man could be a man whether he wanted to talk baseball or just chill out with Miles Davis. There's a certain brotherhood in that, which is more important than any one definition of manliness.
Then my phone rang and the spell was broken. It was my wife.
Originally published in The Blade on Friday, March 27, 2009
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