TO the long list of things I do horribly  break dancing, dusting and gardening, among them  I can now add one more: shaving with a straight razor.

So it became clear as the blood dripped  no, let’s say flowed  down my cheek one recent Sunday morning inside F.S.C. Barber in the West Village in Manhattan. It was less than a minute after my five fellow students and I  all in our 20s and 30s  took blades to our faces at Cut Throat 101, the appropriately named, $70 shaving class given on the first Sunday of every month at 10:30 a.m.

F.S.C.’s Village location at 5 Horatio Street (the original is at 8 Rivington Street on the Lower East Side) is outfitted with antique Koch leather barber chairs from the 1930s, old-fashioned milk-glass lights and a floor of salvaged oak from Appalachia, among other absurdly genuine things. The shop (212-929-3917) provides old school pampering for men who can’t bear to pay $100 for a haircut but want something better than the hair butcher at the corner. (F.S.C. charges $75 for a haircut and a shave.)

“We’re trying to blur the line between a hair salon and a barbershop,” explained Shorty Maniace, the head barber and my shaving teacher for a day. “Men get the quality of a salon, plus the social aspect, without having to hear about Britney Spears or Prada pumps.”