Francis at El Caché 10 — in the chair

Francis has been behind the chair at 1942 Harrison Ave for over 15 years, and it shows in the small things this clip catches — the angle he holds the clippers at going into a fade, the pause before switching to the straight razor for the line-up, the steady hand with the hot towel after. Regulars who've followed him that long don't usually ask for a style by name anymore; they just say "the usual," and he already knows whether that means a low fade with a hard part or a full Dominican cut finished with a blow dry.

What's on screen here is one clip from an ordinary Tuesday at the shop, not a staged demo — the same chair, the same tools, the same corner customers sit in every week. For the fuller picture of what a cut with Francis or the rest of the team looks like, our guide to cuts and fades breaks the styles down by name, and the Dominican barbershop tradition guide covers where techniques like the navaja line-up come from.