I HAVEN’T HAD a shoeshine, a professional shine, in more than a decade, maybe two. I shine my own shoes, usually once a week. Shoeshine parlors were common when I was a boy, and even a young man, in Chicago; most barbershops also had a shoeshine man. Not always but often he was black. I stopped getting shoeshines when race relations in America became so ragged and nervous-making. The symbolism of a black man working at the feet of a white man was too heavy for me. I decided–the hell with it–to shine my own shoes. But the other day, in San Francisco and needing a shine, I passed, on Geary Street, near the city’s small theater district, a small white man, with a face resembling a little that of the battling welterweight Carmen Basilio, in a blue smock seated before his three-seat shoeshine stand. I climbed up into one of the seats. He took a last drag and prepared to toss away his cigarette, which I told him he needn’t do. He replied, in a strong Italian accent, “Smoking all in the head anyway.”
The shine began with his tucking the bows of my shoelaces into the tops of my shoes, so that he would not get polish on them that would rub off on my trouser cuffs. He next lit a Zippo lighter that he touched briefly to the outer sides of my shoes; this, I’ve subsequently learned, is to burn off any loose threads from the leather. With a toothbrush he painted the outer edges of my soles. Five or six rounds of creams and polish were applied, each followed by buffings with either soft clothes or brushes.
Several years ago, Esquire printed an article titled “The World’s Second-Best Shoeshine.” Turns out it was to be had at the airport in Cleveland, where they used an ultraviolet lamp–to precisely what purpose, I cannot now recall–on one’s shoes. For the world’s best shoeshine, it was, the author of the article claimed, a dead-heat tie between the shines available at Grand Central Station and at the Pierre Hotel in New York. This man on Geary Street in San Francisco should have been in the running.
Working away, he told me he was from Calabria, which he loved, though he found it impossible to earn a living there. After he asked me my age, he told me that he was seventy-two, and had attempted to retire, but after three days at home concluded it was not for him. He had four daughters, all living in northern California, and ten grandchildren.
We spoke as two men of the world, and I hope I report accurately when I say there was no condescension on either side. The shine was first-class–it lasted sixteen days. I never asked him how much it cost. When I dismounted from the chair, I handed him a $10 bill. “Grazie,” he said. Had I been wearing a hat, I would have tipped it to him.
I walked off, admiring the deep brown gleam of my shoes, and pleased, not for the first time in my life, that I wasn’t Gene Kelly, or I should have had to tap-dance down Geary Street all the way to Union Square, singing a lyric of doubtless astonishing banality. While perhaps less than Prozacian in its power of uplift, something there is about a fresh shoeshine that exhilarates, or at least it does me. Well-pleated pants, a colorful necktie, a good shine, and thou, and city living is paradise enow.
As a boy, I was asked to shine my father’s shoes, which, unlike other small chores I was given, I didn’t in the least mind. I don’t recall spending much time shining my own shoes as an adolescent. Sometimes, if I were feeling flush, I might have a shoeshine in a barbershop. In the Army, shoe-shining could be nearly a full-time job. My fellow troopers, or at least the more gung-ho among them, would buy alcohol, Q-tips, and special cloths (let us not speak of the expenditure of vast quantities of spit) to achieve the highest possible sheen on their black boots and shoes. When I was a draftee in the peacetime Army, dedicated to a mediocrity of general performance, my own shines came out considerably lower than the highest wattage but were, somehow, passable.
After shining my shoes nowadays, life seems to be a touch more promising. I don’t suppose anyone notices that my shoes are shined, but I, for some reason, notice when they are not. (In this, the age of the gym shoe, some men may no longer own leather shoes.) The notion of having shined shoes speaks to holding up standards, even if in a very minor way.
What really pleased me about my shoeshine in San Francisco was the craft that went into it, which, even though the task might be small, seemed to me of a high order. This Calabrian was a man supplying a service; I required that service. He knew what he was doing, and did it well. The phrase “a pleasure doing business with you,” which I uttered when we parted, did not, for once, seem mere cant.
–Joseph Epstein
