I recently sat down with Michele Simmerer owner of Color Box hair salon in San Francisco. Michele has had a long and very interesting career in the Hair Biz. She worked in one of the most talked about salons in San Francisco, The Pink Tarantula before opening her salon. Michele never pulls any punches and tells it like it is making you laugh at the same time.


Where are you from and what is your background?

I’m from a family of nine children. We are from Seattle, Washington. We lived on Capitol Hill, which didn’t start to get fancy until I was a teenager. It was a mix of big Catholic families, hippie communes, (big houses that had cheap rent). We were a nautical family. My mother, her mother, and two sisters lived on the family’s old steam powered pleasure boat. I never got to see it, as it was long gone by the time I came along.

My father met her while working on the waterfront, and he worked on tugboats and barges.

On Sundays, my dad liked to blast the opera program on the radio. My mother had an upright grand piano on which she played Chopin, Brahms and Beethoven pieces beautifully. She had a pump organ as well. Although I have never had the patience to learn any instruments, i am a big music geek. I did take dance classes. my older brothers and sisters introduced me to rock n roll, and I went to hippie parties and smoke ins at the park as a wee child with them.

I babysat for 3 beautiful young Guru Maharishi followers who each had a bouncing baby boy, and they would leave me joint when they went off to the weekly cult meeting. My group of weird friends and I luckily stumbled upon and enrolled ourselves in a progressive, freewheeling high school. It was the tail end of the era when the public school system was willing to pay for such idealism, luckily for us! I was encouraged to be independent and auto-didactic there.

After you School what did you do?

After high school, I had no serious intention of getting a degree, but I did take a couple art classes at the community college. I was working as a buster at a restaurant, and my father kicked me out of the house, since I was being too independent for his taste and 18, which meant I had to support myself, or, if I lived at home “for free”, go to school, and pay for it. I rented a room in the neighborhood from a nice old couple. I had a mini fridge and a hot plate, and shared the bathroom w/ a transgendered lady.

I saved up a little money and took the Green Tortoise bus to SF for a week’s vacation with my friend Mia, who was 16 and was planning to somehow live off the child support her dad paid ( her mom gave it to her, and let her be independent) and finish high school in SF. By the end of the week, she realized that wasn’t going to work, but we had a great time, staying in a Tenderloin hotel, eating cheap Chinese food, going to the Fab Mab( we had fake id’s!),and seeing Levi and the Rockats on NYE at the Temple Beautiful, right next door to what had been Jim Jones’ church! It was New year’s 1979, and we spent New year’s day in Golden Gate park roller skating in balmy weather (unthinkable in cold, dreary Seattle at that time of year), and I vowed to move to SF someday!!! I miss Mia My beautiful, adventurous friend, she died very young, she got leukemia.


After Seattle where did you go and what did you do?

I left Seattle to travel in Europe at !9, and after traveling a bit, I managed to find an au pair job in Germany,( to get me through the winter, so I could continue my travels in Spring.) I could speak German as I had I paid more attention in German class, and it seemed to be easier for me to learn than French, probably because we smoked pot in the neighbors moldy old geodesic dome before French class, in high school!

I lived with a family in Bavaria , who lived on a beautiful lake, but it was snowy and isolated and a very long walk to get to the train to Munich., which was an hour away. I just had to get there sometimes, or I would go crazy. I hitchhiked sometimes in the snow, on the autobahn. The risks were worth it. I could stay the night at the cafe my friend worked at, and crashed at, herself. My friend from Seattle who soon after met a Libyan, got pregnant and went to live in Libya, married him and had another kid. She was 18.

After I returned from Europe, I moved back in with my parents, got a job, took another trip to SF, got kicked out again, this time by my mom.

So I moved into a big rotten, falling apart mansion w/ a bunch of friends, fell in love, got my heart broken, then decided to move to SF! Finally! I moved down w/ 2 friends. We lived in the “Tender Nob “in a magnificent old apartment building, and wore vintage clothes to go with it, as well as some modern touches, violet hair, studded leather belts, etc… and of course we went to see bands constantly, and had quite a few musician friends( and lovers. of course)

A couple years after my arrival in SF, my best friend called me one day and said we had a job for two months in Japan, including airfare and a place to live, and I had to be in Seattle to leave in two weeks.

Of course I went, realizing an opportunity like that might never come up again!

We were hostesses, and our job was to sit with businessmen at the private club we worked at and mix their whiskey and waters, converse, flirt, sing karaoke with them. The job got old quickly, but it was a great experience to be in such a different culture. not completely inside it, but seeing it from a much different angle than a tourist. The bar was run by, and frequented by Japanese gangsters, and I would joke with them and tell them my Grandpa was Al Capone!( he wasn’t, but we all had a good laugh.}

After returning to SF, I didn’t settle in very well, so I joined a friend I had just met who said she was moving to New Orleans, a place I had always wanted to go! Having never been, I just decided to move there, though I sort of figured I would return to SF at some point.

We quickly found a lovely flat above a Po boy shop, and restaurant jobs, and where the New Wave dance club, and rock n roll venues were!

A few months later I came home to a stranger with pink trimmed hair sleeping on my couch. it was my best friend from Seattle, Carmen, who moved right in. At this point we had lived in three cities in the US together, and two in Japan!


What made you get interested in Hair , makeup and styling?

I had been cutting hair fairly often, since I was fourteen, and a cute boy asked me to trim a few inches off his long locks, as it was the 70;s. I did a pretty good job and soon realized I had a feel for it. Having been interested in art and fashion since childhood, I just knew it was a job that I would enjoy, and I would be able to commit to Cosmetology school staying put in one city, at some point, as it was only a year long. So after a few more, very fun months, I moved to Seattle and went to a high falutin' “School of Cosmetology Design”.

As soon as I finished and got my license, I high-tailed it back down to SF. I assisted in a salon for a few months, then got my first hairdressing job in the Lower Haight. I started getting some faithful clients, some who evolved into long term friends I still see sometimes, and realized it truly is my calling. i also got some work doing hair and makeup for some music videos which was challenging, grueling, and really fun, as well. My friends who got me the jobs were also working on the sets, so that was made it all the better!

Being the eighties, I got to do a lot of fun cuts and colors. I stenciled birds on prop’s heads, shaved spirals and martini glasses, dyed hair turquoise and fuchsia. I’m glad that having fun and experimenting with different colors and hairstyles has come back around again! One day we had two male rock stars, from two completely different eras and genres, both getting their hair dyed at the same time and both of them carefully not noticing or knowing each other. hahaha! We hairdressers loved it.

One quiet nice guy came in for a cut one day, and had to leave his id with me while he got cash from an atm to pay, as I was being the receptionist that day. I looked at his id and was startled to see a name I had seen on many album covers.


If you have any advice to give to young women or girls what would it be?

My advice for young women: Be daring and adventurous! Don't be swayed by people telling you to be safe"!

Travel alone, but always stay alert! Learn to ride a motorcycle! It's the most independent way to get around, and it will take you door to door, which makes it a certain kind of " safe"! Especially late at night... Which leads me to:

Go out alone, go see bands you like, go dancing, take yourself out for dinner and sit at the bar, it's a good way to meet new people, and if you don't, you are doing exactly what you please, without any pressure from anyone else, which can be really empowering. Learn to be happy when you are alone. And my last bit of advice, if you like sex with boys, it does not make you slutty, it just means you like sex, like they do. There is no shame in it. But always, always use condoms. Carry your own, and if they won't wear one, don't fuck them!!! No excuses! And only fuck who / and when you want to. Never let anyone pressure you into having sex, if you don't feel like it.

Punk Globe would like to thank Timm Carney and Michele Simmerer for the fun and very informational interview.....