There was a shop downtown not all that close to where I worked but nevertheless I crossed it often enough so I stopped and watched the work going on and it fascinated me that people had their shoes repaired instead of buying new ones. It was a puzzling activity. Old fashioned.
The sort of thing skinflints would do.
I never owned athletic shoes. Until recently. I had no idea how expensive it was for my parents to keep us all shod. Twice a year as we outgrew them. They were not cheap shoes. And we did wear them out by running around all over the place. Running! All over.
I recall not being able to answer the simple question, "Do those fit?" I did have sensation down there, I could feel what was going on, but I hadn't a clue if clothes fit me or not. I could not compute the sense information to answer, "They're too loose" or "too wide" or "a bit too long" or even "too tight." All the questioning just confused me. I had to wear them awhile to know if they keep falling off, or my socks keep slipping down, or they cause blisters in the heel, or if I kick they go flying off.
So consequently nothing ever fit. And I mean nothing.
These shoe repair places still exist because the need still exists but they're being pushed out by the onslaught of fashionable athletic type shoes. Mass produced with modern materials. Inexpensive. Veritably disposable. I read in reviews that people buy them every six months.
You can buy a pair of these Allen Edmonds shoes for $700.00 right here. That's about 14 pairs of athletic shoes worth, or say, seven years of shoe value. Obviously some are a lot more expensive than others, and that's a ghetto conceit I'm supposing, the more outrageously ugly the shoe then the more expensive.
Thursday Boots sent an advertisement that lauded the quality of their boots by using shoe-terms used in the industry. Surely, none of the customers like me understood the dense industry terms. Every single word had to be looked up and studied for the advertisement to be understood. They hired a designer who combined elements from various styles into a new style with conflicting elements. Cuban heel, Goodyear welt construction, Dublin Horween leather, for example Who even knows what those words mean? So I looked up [shoe anatomy] images and studied the pictures. And the whole time I was thinking, oh man, next time I'm talking to a shoe person I'm going to use all these words; topline, linking, quarter, shank, facing, welt, vamp, outsole.
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A few months back I opened a new account in a Bank in Oakbrook. Oakbrook is a very rich suburb with houses populated with new money and a very lucrative commercial district that keeps residential property taxes relatively low. Inside the bank was an area set aside for a shoe shine business. The proprietor, an elderly black man, had a very dignified demeanor like you see in old movies. He had a steady stream of customers which struck me as unusual as the building was a suburban office building and there's no pedestrian foot traffic. There's no sign indicating his business. I noticed most of his customers drove to use his services. It also looked like he may have done shoe repair.
I'm catching snippets of their conversation, they all spoke like they were old friends. One was about cars. The shoe guy owned three Mercedes, new models by their names. Another was about the stock market discussing the general market and individual stocks owned.
Unless this guy was making book I see shoe shining in a rich suburb is a well paying profession. Who knew?
Vamps and Soles were given a ride on the Uber Jesus thread, with Tongues picked up down the road.
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