The Best HAIR-REMOVAL SERVICES

For Patient Explainers on Gear Ratios CITY BICYCLES, 307 W. 38th St.; citybicyclesnyc.com

WHEN mo hussain fell down the rabbit hole into the world of hobbyist cycling—replete with custom bikes, drop-bar bikes, and Lycra—he had a lot of questions about the right bike to build. “I’d go to shops and annoy mechanics with questions, peppering them for hours,” says Hussain, who works as an IT director and organizes Cycling Fanatics New York, a club for riders in the boroughs and New Jersey. Not every mechanic was receptive to Hussain’s inquisitive approach, but he ultimately found a patient teacher at City Bicycles. While building himself a $1,700 custom track bike for racing in events—a project that required sourcing parts and learning about mechanics like gear ratios—Hussain worked closely with shop owner Jhonatan Moloon. “He explained to me the gearing, what he likes to ride, what a good setup for me would be like, going through each option,” Hussain says. “Those should have been billable hours, but he was just giving away the sauce. And he’s never burdened or irritated.”

For a Same-Day Appointment UNI K WAX, multiple locations; unikwax.com

THERE ARE PLENTY OF fancy places to get a bikini wax in the city—like Haven in Soho, where treatment rooms are decorated with roses floating in bowls of water, or Maris Dusan, which is situated on the ground floor of a Park Avenue townhouse. But none, according to Lili Chemla, founder of clothing company Leset, beat Uni K. No matter which location she visits (the chain has 13 across the city, from Bay Ridge to Lenox Hill to Long Island City), the technicians expertly (and quickly) use hard wax and are “diligent about making sure you’re smooth as a seal,” she says, “not letting a single hair pass their notice.” The no-frills studios are always clean, but the real appeal is the company’s online booking portal and easy-to-parse menu of services listing several variations on bikini waxes, ranging from “top only” ($13), for just the horizontal strip of hair above the pubic area, to a “Boy Short” ($87), which includes hips and inner thighs. Nora DeLigter, writer-director who has been going to Uni K for bikini waxes for eight years, says over all that time, she has “never not gotten a same-day appointment.”

For a BoyZillian MPM, 239 W.26th St.; mpm.studio

WHEN IT COMES TO cleaning up his nether regions, “most woman waxers act kind of afraid of me,” says one avid male client who’d prefer to remain anonymous. “They generally aren’t willing or able to get me into the right positions to really get it done.” Not so at MPM, an exclusively for-men spot in Chelsea that sugars (a hairremoval process that uses a lemon-water-and-paste mixture instead of wax) away hair in the perineum, on the balls, around the shaft, and basically anywhere else the customer pleases (prices start at $30 for “the crack only”). Oskar, one of the technicians, is particularly good at “contorting my body into whatever shape it takes to really get into the crevices of my butt. He’s not shy around or afraid of the male body.” The “BoyZillian” ($60) removes hair from the full pubic area in 30 minutes or less, and while it’s admittedly “extremely painful,” Oskar is “gentle and makes it more tolerable than it should be.”

For Taraji P. Henson’s Go-to TENOVERTEN, 121 Fulton St.; tenoverten.com

IN HER TEN YEARS AT Tenoverten, Miranda Doxani has gained a highprofile following for her sur

prisingly painless waxing services. Her client list includes Demi Moore, Taraji P. Henson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Naomi Watts as well as Jimena Garcia, Chanel’s in-house brow artist, who has been seeing Doxani for bikini waxes (from $35) for 15 years, since before Doxani moved to Tenoverten. Doxani uses nontoxic products (Satiness beeswax, natural resin-based wax, azulene oil), but Garcia says Doxani’s finesse comes down to experience: “She knows how to adjust the temperature, the pace, the way she holds her hands specifically. You can learn technique in school, but you have to actually do it over and over to be able to really see hair-growth patterns and hair types the way she does.”

For a ’90s-esque Arch ZUBI’S THREADING CORNER, 157 Allen St.; zubisthreading-corner .business.site

“zubi always has a point of view about eyebrow shape and the relationship between how your hair grows and the shape of your face,” says stylist Mellany Sanchez of Zubi Kothiya, owner of Zubi’s Threading Corner. (She got Kothiya’s name in the first place from her friend Seymore Fleck, a beauty specialist who has been seeing Kothiya since 2008.) Take, for instance, the time Sanchez showed Kothiya her saved photos of ’90s supermodels and Puerto Rican women with their ultra-arched, razor-thin brows. (“I live for it,” she says.) Kothiya steered her away, suggesting instead that a better arch would be achieved by growing her brows in and shaping them so they gently taper past the outer corners of her eyes. Now Sanchez has a feathery, ’90s-esque arch with none of the no-goingback overplucking. (From $10 to $200 for a wide range of services.)

For No Ingrowns SHEN BEAUTY, 138 Court St., Cobble Hill; shenbeauty.com

beauty writer

Saleam Singleton gets chest and stomach waxes and says his priority is to find “a service that is as gentle as possible” because his coarse hair typically leads to ingrown hairs and irritation. He’s been a regular for a year at Shen Beauty, where he sees Annie Otaigbe, who does waxing, facials, and body treatments (from $16 to $145). Otaigbe is “very interested in and passionate about skin care,” says Singleton, pointing to her biomedical-informatics training from the Aveda Arts & Sciences Institute New York as well as the product regimen she has put him on. Besides using micellar water, Amber After Wax Quench, and Fur Oil (a product that softens pubic hairs and clears pores) during treatments (and recommending them for at-home care), Otaigbe has given

Singleton crucial advice on preventing ingrowns in between waxes. From sharing the best exfoliators (Nécessaire’s The Body Exfoliator) to which acids will gently treat hyperpigmentation (glycolic, kojic, and mandelic), “it’s more than just waxing,” Singleton says. “I’ve gone to waxers in the past who don’t share any tips, but Annie is a gem.”

For a DominatrixApproved Bikini Treatment LUNA LE VAG, 1096 Broadway, Bushwick; lunalevag.com

mistress marley is a financial dominatrix who, until last year, got regular bikini waxes that would often leave her sore and with uneven hair regrowth. She immediately converted to sugaring after going to Jordan Cozens, co-owner of Luna Le Vag in Bushwick. “It’s less painful,” she says. “I’m in and out in ten minutes, and I can go a whole month and the hair doesn’t grow back.” Plus, as Marley discovered, Luna Le Vag offers a menu of services tailored to skin care for women of color: To gently lighten the hyperpigmentation on her bikini line, Marley stocks up on Luna Le Vag’s Clear Skies brightening solution, made with witch hazel, kojic acid, and glycolic acid. Every three to four months, she’ll add on one of Luna Le Vag’s facial-foryour-bikini treatments, called a Vajacial (from $60)—the clay mask and hydrating post-sugaring treatment are meant to help exfoliate dead skin and coax out any ingrowns. “It’s a very relaxing experience” as well as a thorough one, Marley says. “She’s super-informative. To go to someone who understands your hair and after-care is so important.”

For Ancestral Brows AZI SACKS, THE BROW STUDIO, 205 W. 20th St.; azibrow.com

as a child, zara Rahim’s unibrow was openly praised at home by her Bangladeshi family but mocked by her classmates at her Florida school.

“I threaded my eyebrows mercilessly as soon as

I was allowed to,” says the communications strategist, and from the age of 17 up until the pandemic, she kept her brows in distinct, separate arches. But postlockdown, with her childhood brow fully rewilded after having no access to a salon, she decided to leave “colonial standards of beauty” behind. On a recommendation from hairstylist Dhiran Mistry, she went to see Azi Sacks, whose “eyes lit up in a way I hadn’t seen before,” Rahim says. “Her concern was, ‘How do we keep these as full and ancestral as possible?’ ” For Rahim, Sacks carefully tweezes to preserve her brows’ natural shape ($120 for shaping)— somehow taming the cowlick that stumped previous eyebrow artists— and adds a tint ($40) for further definition.