Call it implicit bias. Maybe it’s profiling. The fact is I can’t tell one billionaire bald guy from the next. It’s a bigger problem than you might think.
Early Sunday morning, two weeks ago, I was shopping at Smart & Final on Gutierrez Street. I was stocking up on beans and beer and enjoying a little Sabbath solitude. But there in the aisle where pink pastries are sold, I encountered none other than Thomas Barrack II — investment mogul, owner of Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, and most infamously, friend, advisor, and consigliore to Donald Trump and the chair of Trump’s inaugural committee. The guy had Barrack’s signature chrome dome; he had the same telltale squint lines, common to all visionaries who stare off into the future. And even on a cold, gray Sunday morning, the guy exuded all the gracious masculine ease that makes Barrack so irresistible.
Still, it seemed a little improbable that a guy whose company, Colony Capital, oversees in the neighborhood of $44 billion would be wandering the aisles of a low-end bulk food store. I checked again. He looked the same age as Barrack — 71 — and was fit and trim like Barrack. He wore black athletic warm-up pants and was sporting a ball cap bearing some horse-related logo. Barrack, as everyone knows, is nuts about polo. He plays all the time; he owns his own team.