Halifax — While Orkin has triggered St. John’s residents over their naming of the city as the ‘rattiest’ place in Atlantic Canada, a different association revealed Halifax to be the leader in a different rat category.
The Atlantic Association of Barbers and Hairstylists have named Halifax as the number one city for rattails — a popular 1980s hairstyle where a long “tail”-like braid of hair protrudes downward from the back of the head.
“I didn’t know that we were making lists and releasing them! This is fun,” said Ron Geurqueue, president of the association. “It’s a well-known fact that the rattail hairstyle didn’t die out in the 1980s on the East Coast. That radical hairstyle is still everywhere in the Atlantic region, but especially prevalent in Halifax.
“It takes a hairstylist with especially strong impulse control to cut the hair of someone with a rattail,” said Geurqueue. “It takes all of the willpower that they can muster not to put that gnarly braid out of its misery. At least once per month I hear a story of someone who had to be physically restrained to prevent the chopping of a rattail. It’s a real problem.”
Geurqueue also released other Atlantic Canadian hairstyle facts:
- Tatamagouche, N.S. has more mullets per capita than anywhere else in Canada.
- The leading hairstyle in Mount Pearl, N.L. is the “untrimmed moustache.”
- Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil was known to wear a version of the “Rachel from Friends” haircut in the 1990s.
- Men with combovers in Saint John, N.B. have a secret handshake. They also won’t let you look in their trunk under any circumstances.
- There is one guy in Charlottetown with a mohawk. Most people don’t know who he is, but most have seen him and talk about him behind his back.