Every barbershop arranges itself around one piece of furniture heavy enough that moving it means moving the business: the chair, pedestal down, facing the mirror wall, with everything else in the room assembled in a loose orbit around its fixed point. Recline varies more than a customer would guess. Some chairs tilt a full forty degrees before the headrest meets a neck at a comfortable angle; others lock up short of thirty and leave the backrest doing more of the work.
A foot pump on the left side, worked in short bursts, raises the whole seat on a hydraulic column with a hiss and a series of small drops, adjusting height for however tall the customer happens to be, then higher again for whoever sits down after. The pedestal base outweighs the rest of the chair combined, cast iron under a chrome skirt, built to keep several hundred pounds of moving parts from tipping during a shave. Armrests wear through their vinyl first, at the exact spot where a forearm rests for the full twenty minutes of a cut, while the seat itself, taking less continuous pressure, tends to last considerably longer. A shop replaces the vinyl before it replaces the chair, usually more than once, and the chair underneath keeps going.