WetShaving

June 19, 2025

• Brush: AP Shave Co Lemondrop 28mm SynBad
• Razor: Gillette Tech English Flat Bottom
• Blade: Astra Superior Platinum (6)
• Lather: House of Mammoth - 福 (Fú Dào)  - Soap
• Post Shave: Fabergé - Brut - Aftershave
• Post Shave: Thayers - Cucumber - Toner

2 passes. Bowl lather. Good shave.

Fú Dào can be interpreted as "good fortune has arrived". Great sentiment. I celebrate lady luck when she smiles on me and I have been very fortunate. This good fortune has afforded me many freedoms.

More pertinent to this Juneteenth holiday, though, I can imagine that those slaves in Galveston, Texas felt that "good fortune has (finally) arrived" on learning of their freedom in 1865.

If I'm going to shave without a mirror, by feel, I'm not using a straight razor. It feels very unnatural to shave without a reflection. I did not realize how much I depended on it. With a DE it is completely doable, though.

Juneteenth: Day 19 of Lather Games

• Brush: Rubberset 400-3 with a 26 mm unbleached Zenith boar knot at 56 mm loft $Hollow $AtomicAge $DoorKnob
• Razor: Wilkinson Sword – Wilkinson Razor $ADJUSTABLE $EIGHTDAYSAWEEK $FOREVERSAFETY $MACHINEAGE
• Lather: Martin de Candre – Absinthe
• Post Shave: Speick – Men Active
• Fragrance: Spearhead Shaving Company – Seaforth! 3 Scots

Theme justification: It's a hot summer Sunday morning in Commugny, and drops of morning dew glint on the leaves and grapes of the vineyards around the village. The air is still heavy from the thunderstorm that had rolled over Lake Geneva the night before. Vineyard worker Jean Lanfray had slept like shit and wakes up in a mood. He is thirsty. He decides to sneak out before his wife wakes up and starts nagging him about the list of chores to get done before the baby arrives. Jean knows that she hates him, and that the only reason she hasn't divorced him yet is because the priest at Founex had convinced her to stick with him. Down the street, Jean slinks into Gorgette's Buvette and orders a glass of wine, then another. He gets hungry and orders a sandwich with another glass of wine. The thirst doesn't go away and he keeps ordering until he has finished a bottle. His dad shows up and they decide to drink cognac. Six glasses later, Jean feels a bit tired and orders a coffee with brandy and two crèmes de menthe for dessert. By now it's early afternoon, and Jean knows that he better goes home now, so he quickly orders a glass of absinthe to wash it all down. And a second glass, just to make sure. At home, he's a bit tired again, so he tells his wife to make him another coffee with brandy. Scared, she does what he asks. He likes the feeling of power and orders her to polish his shoes, but this time she starts talking back. Going on about divorce again. Jean loses it. The nerve on her. And pregnant with his child, too! He gets his Vetterli rifle from the foot locker and beats her over the head with it. That will teach her, he thinks, but instead she starts screaming for help and runs away, to the back door through the kitchen. He follows her with three long strides, aims and shoots her in the back of her head. Alarmed, his 4 year old daughter Rose comes storming in and he shoots her too. Her little sister Blanche, 18 months old, starts crying in her pram and he shuts her up with a shot in the head. Now he can hear the neighbours yell for the gendarmerie and it dawns on him that this might end poorly for him. He leaves the house and goes to his barn, where he sits down and shoots himself in the face. He misses his brain and only mangles his jaw. He collapses. The gendarmes arrest him minutes later. The trial lasts only one day, and Dr Albert Mahaim, a leading psychologist and expert witness testifies that Lanfray had suffered from a classic case of absinthe madness. Obviously. The public outrage is enormous, and already a few months later, on May 15, 1906, the Canton de Vaud bans the production, sale, possession, and consumption of absinthe. At the federal level, a ballot initiative bans it a few years later in a constitutional amendment, starting the era of moonshine absinthe in the Val de Travers. Think Appalachia, but the bootleggers speak French and make expensive watches in winter.

Fast forward to the late 1990s and a teenage djundjila growing up in a small town in northern Switzerland, looking for ways to rebel with his friends discovers absinthe. The green fairy, de verbotni schnaps.

Nowadays, 20 years after the federal ban had been lifted, the smell of absinthe still reminds me of evenings at the banks of the Aare, drinking moonshine absinthe and feeling grown-up, cool, and free. If you're wondering about the bottle of US moonshine that was smuggles to Switzerland in a nappy bag in the SOTD picture, I added it because it tells me that people feel the same about moonshine everywhere, and that's why they keep making them even after prohibitions end.

Relevant post or frag: Speick has a similar folklore as absinthe, centring around exaggerated properties ascribed to a mountain herb, and 3 Scots makes me think of William Wallace and his fight for freedom (I know that it's the name of a British regiment, the irony isn't lost on me).

Challenge: I first planned to use an open blade razor for this like u/Marquis90 is his legendary lake shave, but TACOed eventually. With a safety razor, it's surprisingly easy to shave without mirror. The only difficulties are feeling the side burns levels and feeling all the missed spots.

The Wilkinson is a fun over-engineered razor that tries to be everything at once: auto-stropping, switchable, but rehonable blades, and adjustable. It's functional, but not a razor I enjoy with its gigantic head that gets in the way.

June 19th, 2025: History

• Brush: AP Shave Co. - Synbad 24mm Synthetic
• Razor: Koraat 15/16 Full Hollow - Sub Exclusive 'Moarteen' (14)
• Lather: Summer Break Soaps - History 101 - Soap
• Post Shave: Spearhead Shaving Company - Seaforth! Leather - Aftershave
• Fragrance: Spearhead Shaving Company - Seaforth! Leather - EdP

Theme justification: The history of the United States is short and full of tragedy. The Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation and made some allowances for slavery, initially allowing the slave trade to continue for 20 years. It ended up continuing for six decades, but overall the authors of the constitution knew what was right, and what was wrong. History is doomed to repeat itself, and we're witnessing that right now in the USA. The Constitution is being broken every day and it's a terrible thing. History 101 is what I imagine the original copy of the Constitution smelling like. Leather bound books, tobacco from pipes, sawdust from the rough sawn floors of Independance Hall where it was written. Despite the current administration taking steps in the wrong direction, overall I know we'll come out of this with an opportunity to rebuild, and that's why this soap is on theme for me.

Great shave from the Moarteen. I think this is an older soap base, or maybe I just loaded it too wet, but it was pretty high volume. Still, good slickness and protection!

June 19th, 2025: Juneteenth

• Brush: Rad Dinosaur Creations "Nebulagance" - TurnNShave Quartermoon 26mm Synthetic
• Razor: RazoRock - Game Changer .76-P
• Blade: Wizamet Super Iridium (1)
• Lather: Noble Otter - Lonestar - Soap
• Post Shave: Noble Otter - Lonestar - Aftershave
• Post Shave: Stirling - Glacial Unscented - Balm
• Fragrance: Chiseled Face - Summer Storm - EdP

$discord

Theme: Lonestar reminds me of freedom because it brings me back to the wide open plains of New Mexico. There's nothing quite like the sense of freedom you get when it feels like you have the desert to yourself. I miss living there dearly.

Daily challenge: I was unable to get a picture or video because I'm squeezing a shave in while at a rental cabin with friends. I did shave without a mirror, and it was not as bad as I expected, though it felt weird. Pretty good results overall, though.

$SELFCARE - Took a long weekend this weekend to spend some time with friends I don't get to see often.

$FOF - The sage, hay, and grass in Lonestar move naturally into the dirt, ozone, and petrichor in Summer Storm. It felt like getting caught in an afternoon thunderstorm in the desert. Just lovely.

$ROTY