A contrarian clip

Most businesses I know are either scaling back, planning on closing, or, in a lot of cases, have already thrown in the towel. The suitcase squad–professionals fleeing the island’s economic wildfire– is an element of the business brigade, and the brigade has decided to fight other battles in better venues.

It was, then, a pleasant surprise to see some construction–not destruction–going on near the old movie house, where an entrepreneur, Remedios Lloyd, has installed her third Saipan beauty salon. Take a look at my picture, I’m sure a guy who could use a lot of beatification, so I stopped by the newly opened Trinity’s Beauty Salon. It’s a clean and well-lighted place, and a lot of us (by no means all) can identify with a tenacious entrepreneur swimming upstream against the lousy economic river.

Unfortunately, they were unable to beautify me; the diagnosis was that I need a complete overhaul, and I was referred to a plastic surgeon in Geneva for a nip-and-tuck, full body liposuction, and a face transplant. The bad news is that health insurance won’t cover these procedures. The good news is that I don’t have any health insurance (hey, not all of us work for the government), so the fact that health insurance doesn’t cover this is moot, and I’m not losing out on anything.

Although I may be beyond aesthetic redemption, in good times (remember those?) and in bad (which means, by the way, “now,”) haircuts and related types of services don’t fall out of favor. Nobody (ok, nobody I consider a friend, at least) wants to look like a ragamuffin. A good beauty salon, then, has an appeal even when the economy is in the dumps.

What’s more, I’ll give the place a thumbs up for location. It’s near the Chalan Kanoa post office, which makes it a convenient shot. Maybe Trinity’s should rent out P.O. boxes as well, seeing as keeping a sufficient inventory of them has proven to be entirely beyond the ken of the intellectuals managing our postal affairs here.

On that note, I’ll relate that somebody from the U.S. recently asked me about opening up a business here, and after I stopped laughing I tasked him with this simple benchmark of Saipan’s environment: just try to find a U.S. postal P.O. box. It can’t be done. This isn’t a do or die thing, of course, but a mere indicator of the millions of tiny things you’d take for granted elsewhere that don’t apply here. While we (well, not me) are deluding ourselves with grand dreams of building the next space shuttle here, the smaller businesses are asking little questions like “can we get reliable electricity?” (answer: no) and “why is raw sewage flowing in the streets in front of my store?” (answer: because you put your store where the raw sewage flows).

Which isn’t the point, and Trinity’s isn’t in one of our open sewer zones, but you’ll forgive the divergence, given that my prescription for a face transplant has shaken me up a bit. For those of you who can be redeemed by less radical means, Trinity’s Beauty Salon in Chalan Kanoa looks to be a nice clip joint.

Stephens is an economist with Stephens Corporation, a professional organization in the NMI. His column appears three times a week: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Mr. Stephens can be contacted via the following e-mail address: ed4Saipan@yahoo.com.