I met Robin in 1994—the exact same year we opened Otherlands Coffee Bar inside Cottland Bedding Company right down the street in Cooper-Young. I had a head full of hair that hung past my shoulders, so the natural thing to do was have Robin cut it and put the deepest darkest deposit of Wella No1 Black hair dye on it.
I wanted the neck of a blackbird, the way it shines, so she put a blue wash over that black.
“I wanted the neck of a blackbird, the way it shines, so she put a blue wash over that black.”
The concoction of pomade was one Joel and I mixed: Memphis-made Black and White pomade (only available in England at the time), Murray’s orange can pomade, and 3 dashes of liquid Tres Flores hair dressing oil.
You couldn’t get a brush or garden rake through that so I had a Stainless Steel 10” comb that had to be heated to comb through the wax. (Yes, it was sharpened so it doubled as a razor knife).
This is what we referred to as my COIFFURE DELUXE and can be seen captured in this ridiculous photo Sallie took of me on set with Bryan in Will’s ’74 Monte Carlo. We were cuttin' up in the 90s!!
The second we cut all that hair off, I walked straight out of the salon, crossed the asphalt, and stepped into Maxwell’s with that jet-black, bird-neck blue pompadour. David Parks—the Sheriff of the Twilight Zone—looked up from behind the mahogany and almost lost his damn mind right there on the spot. Parks has always been a total Dapper Dan man: immaculate cut and style, very old-school military, and an absolute icon with us gays. For a man of that caliber of grooming to drop his jaw, you knew it was so real nobody could look away.
Left to right: Stevan Collins Lazich, Kaleo Quenzer, and Bryan on set in Downtown Memphis during the 1996 filming of Blown (released 1997). The Wild West era of guerrilla indie film: no permits, open-carry prop revolvers, fedoras, sunglasses, and Detroit iron.
It was like the Wild West back then—zero permits, open-carrying prop snub-nose revolvers through the streets, and full guerrilla car chases tearing across public Downtown asphalt on Super 8 celluloid. We were completely untamed.
If I stayed at your house at anytime back then, I apologize about your pillow cases.
Trashy ole greasy Drape!! I ain’t no Square.
Stevan Collins Lazich (TallSlimCollins)
Artist, craftsman, and chronicler of living Mid-South memory. Operating out of Spottswood House, Memphis, TN.
