Salon

William F. Fritz, a World War II veteran who owned and operated a well-known Pikesville hair salon for more than 50 years, died Wednesday of kidney failure at Gilchrist Hospice Care. He was 85. Born and raised in Baltimore, Mr. Fritz was a 1943 graduate of Patterson High School. During World War II, he enlisted in the Marine Corps and served in the South Pacific, attaining the rank of corporal. After the war, he returned to Baltimore, where he planned to become a barber until two uncles persuaded him to become a hairstylist instead.

A second county beauty salon has offered to make good on gift certificates from a Severna Park shop that closed last year.Sylvia Campana, owner of Image Creators Inc. in Severna Park, said she would accept gift certificates from Elite Total Skin, Hair & Body Care if theyare redeemed within six months.Elite, which was in the Severn Crossing office complex on RitchieHighway, closed without notice in late December, leaving many customers with gift certificates they could not use.After learning about the customers' predicament, Todd August, co-owner of Morgan Gerard in Annapolis, stepped forward last week to say his shop would honor the certificates.

An Annapolis man paroled from prison in October has been charged with bursting into a tanning booth and repeatedly stabbing a 23-year-oldwoman with a butcher knife.Police say a man walked into the Sun Seekers Tanning Salon through an open back door about 6:20 p.m. Tuesday and tried to open each of the nine tanning booths. He found the last booth unlocked, pulled up the top of the tanning bed and stabbed Michele McIntire, 23, of 2000 block of Jason Court in Crofton.McIntire was listed in critical condition yesterday at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center at University Hospital in Baltimore with stab wounds to her neck, arm and chest.

DREAMING entrepreneurial dreams, a hairdresser I know wondered aloud about the kind of business that could work well in tandem with a hair salon. "A coffee bar," she said. "Yeah, a coffee bar would work. Or how about a sushi bar? Or a book store maybe. How about an ice cream parlor?"Sorry, my dear. That's been done.You can find such a place in Locust Point. (But you can't find it on Mondays. It's closed Mondays. Scott Erickson, the Orioles hunk, went there for a haircut on a Monday, and the women of the shop have been sick about missing him ever since.

Joseph J. Rishel, curator of pre-1900 European painting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, drew a near-capacity audience for his talk on the current Mitchell Gallery exhibition The Elegant Salon: European Academic Paintings from the Syracuse University Art Collection. He shared his observations on the paintings displayed from the collection amassed by Annie Walter Arents that was given to Syracuse University in 1949. We had gone to St. John's Mitchell Gallery two days earlier so we could view the collection without the crowds.

When a man slipped into Michele K. McIntire's cubicle at the Sunseekers Tanning Salon in Gambrills Tuesday night, she apparently thought someone was playing a joke on her."It sounded like she was laughing at first," said Marc R. Browne, an employee who had been using a tanning bed in an adjacent room. "I guess she thought someone had gone in there as a joke."I hate to use the cliche, but the next thing I heard was this blood-curdling scream. She kept yelling, 'Get off! Get off!' " Mr. Browne said.

The city plans to spend $186,000 to move a downtown hair salon across the street from its current location, a city-owned building that will be torn down for a parking garage. The Board of Estimates approved the relocation deal for Monica's Spa Salon yesterday after City Council President Sheila Dixon raised concerns about the cost. "It just seems like a lot of money," she said. However, Dixon and the rest of the board approved the deal after an official with the Baltimore Development Corp.

The economy hasn't been kind to Christal Perry's pocketbook, but she's not letting that show in her hair. The private-school teacher's side job as a settlement agent has suffered because fewer people are buying homes, but the Randallstown woman keeps one regular meeting on her schedule - with her stylist, every other week. "It's a luxury I tell myself I deserve," said Perry, 35. But for many customers, the recession is evidenced by roots of a different hue and do-it-yourself treatments.

Gentle shampoos, facials, manicures, pedicures and hourlong massages are not treats just for women anymore, but can be gifts for men, too."Most men think it's a sissy kind of thing, but once they experience it, they really love it," said Judy Twomey, a massage therapist at Artistic Hair Design Salon and Spa in Pasadena. "Then it's no longer a sissy thing, it's an 'I deserve it' thing."Regular massages have "pretty much changed my life," said Frank Buckler of Annapolis, whose daughter gave him a gift certificate for a massage at Jeanie's Salon on West Street in Annapolis for his birthday in January.