New York over there

Brooklyn represents on a sand-strewn road in Cambérène, a suburb of Dakar, Senegal, where a barbershop named for the borough of Kings serves as a neighborhood hangout. It’s the place to get buzzed, but only in terms of hair, since most of the town’s 30,000 inhabitants are observant Muslims prohibited from indulging in alcohol. Like most such establishments around the world, the Brooklyn Salon de Coiffure offers customers a chance to chew the fat on topics of the day, like the recent presidential contest in which the incumbent, 80-year-old Abdoulaye Wade, was reelected by a large margin in a field of 15 candidates. (Which may sound like a lot, but Senegal has something like 65 political parties.) Although the amenities we take for granted—flush toilets, $4 mochachinos—are scarce in this West African nation of 11 million, taking care of one’s hair is something of a national obsession. And for most men, that means keeping it gaata: “short” in Wolof, the local language.—Laura Silver