The Saddest Strike Story in Town

This week’s New Yorker, on newsstands today, contains a “Talk of the Town” that tells the bittersweet tale of someone named Cara Hannah. She is, according to the petit profile, currently suffering the brunt of both the Writers Guild strike and the collective towel-throw of Broadway stagehands. After all, Ms. Hannah is a wig stylist. And she not only powders pate-rugs for The Phantom of the Opera, but also for the funny folks at Saturday Night Live.

Because both productions have gone dark, she has been forced to trade in the glamour of eight-hour fittings for James Bond skits at 30 Rock for the bleak, lonely landscape of the classifieds. But after being snubbed by a wig shop and then Macy’s, Ms. Hannah started cutting hair in her bathroom, or, Chez Sullivan Salon, as her fiancé has billed the joint. In just two days, business was booming—she suddenly had more heads to cut and style in her loo than Frédéric Fekkai on a Friday. “I think my prices are attractive,” she told the magazine. “I take into consideration that, you know, I’m making people sit next to my john.”