This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Emmanuel chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, I traveled to New York City with an agenda containing one item: I had to try the viral $25 blowout as soon as possible. I had seen numerous videos on TikTok about some salons in Chinatown that only charged $25 for their service, but none of the videos featured women with thick, curly hair like mine. This lack of representation made me incredibly curious, and slightly concerned once I was in the salon chair, about how the process would go. Here is how it went.<\/p>\n
The Wash Experience<\/p>\n
When I walked into A \u9aee\u578b Hair Salon on 135 E Broadway at 5:24 P.M., I was immediately ushered to a salon chair in the back of the room, where a woman started washing my hair. This is usually my favorite part of the entire hair salon experience \u2013 relaxing and spa-like. Unfortunately, this time was a little bit different.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The woman had razor-sharp nails and scratched at my scalp for 6 minutes straight. It was honestly painful enough in some spots that I worried my head might start bleeding. For the next 12 minutes, she alternated between scratching and massaging my head, which I definitely enjoyed more, while she washed the shampoo and conditioner out of my hair.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Next, I was sat upright and given a shoulder massage that also unfortunately had me wincing out of pain. Now, I want to be clear: I am not a physically sensitive person, and my scalp is not sensitive at all. I would also like to add that my experience with the wash station was not all bad, and that while it may have been a bit rough, I may not have ever had my hair cleaned so thoroughly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Blowout<\/p>\n
When my shoulder massage was finished, I was led over to another chair where I met my stylist for the evening. Full disclosure, I did have the stylist cut my hair, as I had some gnarly dead ends and it had been years since my last cut, so the price of my visit to the salon was more than $25; however, there was a sign above the wash station that stated the service was the promised $25.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After a few minutes of discussing what I was looking for, the stylist began drying and blowing out my hair. This process took roughly 30 minutes and was a wonderful experience. The stylist was friendly and talked to me throughout the process, was very communicative about what he was doing and what I wanted, and left me very pleased with my appearance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When he went to style my hair, I asked him to do a big, bouncy, curly blowout. I appreciated that he did not use too much heat, and he was even thoughtful enough to leave the curls unbrushed so that they would last until I could brush them out later that night when I attended a Broadway show.<\/p>\n
Overall Thoughts<\/p>\n
I will say that I wish the wash experience was gentler, as it did put a sort of taint on the whole process for me. Again, I feel the need to reiterate that I do not have a sensitive scalp and have yanked my own hair out trying to brush it as a child, so I was a bit surprised to feel pain during the wash.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the end, I paid $60 with a tip \u2013 incredibly affordable considering I had my hair washed, cut, and styled. One thing to note: the salon is cash-only. I wish I had known beforehand, but there was an ATM on-site, so it wasn\u2019t a major inconvenience.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was also surprised to find that my curls lasted all night and through the next week, since curls usually fall out quickly when my hair is styled. I managed to stretch this blowout for nearly 2 weeks, using overnight sock curls to keep everything together.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Overall, I rate the experience a 7.5 out of 10. My only complaint is the roughness of the wash, so if I do return, I may just ask for something a bit gentler. I do think that for the price and the longevity of the styling, I would recommend trying out this salon!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Emmanuel chapter and does not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[7578,12031,61870,5017,61869,232,9,56,63,65,64,12033,2407,6162],"class_list":["post-147527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-beauty","tag-chapterchapter","tag-chapteremmanuel","tag-hair","tag-hcemmanuel","tag-lifestyle","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-sponsoredno","tag-style","tag-viral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}