Famed gnomish barber, Van Sortuyvant has served the city's eastern and southern neighborhoods for five decades.

The most highly regarded barber in Ambehgris, Van Sortuyvant's shop is an ephemeral wonder: known as The Avail, it is a booth with dark blue walls and a single chair, around which is a counter and catwalk that can be adjusted to place the diminutive merchant at the ideal height to serve his customers.  The Avail appears at various locations in different neighborhoods at different times by means unknown but probably arcane: installation, removal and transportation thereof have never been reliably witnessed.  It can inhabit the empty shell of a shop in a Riverward ruin one night, appear a cart in Zeenik Town two days later, then manifest in a booth in a Tatun Ways market a night later.

Van Sortuyvant's skill transcends styles and cuts of head and facial hair that are popular in Ambehgris, extending to rarified culture- or race-specific tonsorial needs, from the specific beard and moustache forms associated with Barovian clans, to the full-body trims and fur-sculpting of Tabaxi gentry, from elaborate braiding of dwarven beards and hair, to the baroque lacquers and dyes of human and elven nobility.

Van Sortuyvant is noted for his finely brocaded robes, his shears made from the impossibly sharp beaks of a species of Il'Foetidean squid, The Greater Ravencuttle, and his razor purportedly bent from an ancient elven sword, the Woeswain.

The Avail also vends a wide array of perfumes, oils, and tonics for skin and hair of all races.

Will not work with children under the age of 13 for any reason.