Best No-Frills Eyebrow Wax and Tint

Anastasia in Beverly Hills it's not. The only attempts at decorating in this beige, bleak Vietnamese-run joint in Hollywood are the pots of fake flowers — and the colorful stacked bottles of polish, whose chemical aromas greet you like a slap in the face.

This bare-bones shop is surprisingly busy serving a local clientele that includes students from nearby Hollywood High, young actresses and even local trannies. The staff is an extremely friendly bunch despite the fact that they spend long hours picking at corns and sawing down bunions on some truly scary-looking feet.

Although the staff likes to giggle back and forth in Vietnamese (are they poking fun at a slight anomaly on my toe or just chatting amiably?), who can blame them for taking a few digs at feet that seem to have just scaled the French Alps shoeless?

The shop offers pedicures, manicures, Brazilian bikini waxes and all the rest. Waxes and tints are conducted in a backroom a few feet away from the pedicure-and-manicure set, who peruse gossip magazines or watch soap operas on a TV bolted to the wall while being tended to.

The "plucking" room is nothing to write home about, but it's still relaxing to lay back on their gurneylike bed while the girls get down to waxing (using a big pot of goop) or tinting the cheeks, lips, eyebrows and backs as well as the more personal areas.

An eyebrow wax runs $10, and eyebrow tints, which last for weeks, cost just $15. (Well worth the slight discomfort.) And there's plenty of free parking underground.—Christine Pelisek