A. Fontana Shoe Repair

VANISHING: Spring 2008



After 45 years in its East Village location on 10th across from Saint Mark's Church, A. Fontana Shoe Repair is closing down for good. I went in this morning to buy a can of weatherproofing spray and the owner, Mr. Angelo Fontana, told me he'll be gone in about three months. The rent is going too high.

"Soon," he said of the city, throwing up his hands in futility, "there will be no more barbershop, no more shoe repair, no more tailor." That's the new New York. Now there is no place left for what The Washington Post called "one of the world's best shoe repair shops."



I asked Angelo if I could take some pictures of his wonderful shop. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "Everyone else is, why not?" He explained that The New York Times and a neighborhood paper, perhaps The Villager, will be visiting him this weekend to get their take on the story. Maybe they can coax more out of Angelo than I did -- he is a man of few words. But he did let me take plenty of pictures.



The shop is a time capsule, filled with wooden shoe lasts, fragrant jars of gooey glue, ancient machines outfitted with spinning brushes and buffers, and an assortment of tools that look like they came over from Mr. Fontana's native Italy sometime in the early 20th century. Posters and calendars of Italia cover the walls. A rabbit-eared television plays silently on the counter.



And the place smells wonderful--like leather and glue and rubber. It's an old smell, a vanishing smell.

In his poem "Walking Around," a longtime favorite of mine, Pablo Neruda says that the smell of barbershops makes him break into hoarse sobs. Today, I would add that the smell of A. Fontana's cobbler shop gives me the same, sad, desperate feeling.

• more photos on my flickr

Billy & Angelo

This past Saturday, Reverend Billy and his Stop Shopping Gospel Choir made a poignant plea outside Angelo Fontana's closing shoe repair shop, which I wrote about here in December with lots of pictures. Anyway, I missed the protest, but a tipster turned me on to Billy's website where pictures and a video of the entire event can be found.


photo: rev billy

During the first part of the video, Angelo stands in the doorway looking somewhat inscrutably bemused as Billy and the choir do their thing, preaching and singing the story of Mr. Fontana's demise. Billy explains how Angelo's original landlord had two buildings, he was the local pharmacist, and undoubtedly knew all the people he rented to. His son, now Angelo's leaseholder, owns 150 buildings and is raising Angelo's rent. “That is the story of New York City," Billy says, "that soulless absence of human scale... The demon monoculture is surrounding us!"

Then, towards the end of the video, Billy and the choir are invited into Angelo's shop and a woman serenades him in Italian. The song is sad and lovely and it might bring tears to your eyes, as Billy and Angelo embrace. It's a touching moment in this hideous time of ongoing condoschmerz and wholesale loicide.

I Dream of Fontana

Last night I dreamed A. Fontana Shoe Repair reopened. Angelo was there. Overjoyed, he showed me his new lease--12 more years with no rent increase! Although it had been gutted, most of the interior had somehow been saved and replaced. Only now, instead of a shoe repair shop, it was a barber shop with a single red chair. The walls were pistachio faux-wood paneling, the ceiling strung with Christmas lights.



Angelo felt like celebrating. He poured us each a tall shot glass filled with spicy orange-flavored liquer. I drank mine fast, he sipped his, and I felt embarrassed for drinking mine the wrong way. I told Angelo that I would write about the reopening on my blog and "let everybody know to come back." He smiled but didn't seem to understand what I was saying.

He had a new television and a VCR, and he put in a Marcello Mastroianni movie. The mood shifted. Angelo became quiet and retreated into the back of the shop, through a door, into a decrepit room that looked like a defunct tavern from another age.



I took out my camera to take pictures of the shop for my blog, but the batteries were low and I couldn't get the flash to work. I became anxious, worrying that I would not be the first blogger to announce "Fontana Reopens!"

People started coming in to get their hair cut. Angelo forgot about me. I went outside. The shop windows were foggy and I couldn't see in. I soon realized that Fontana's had not reopened after all. I went into a Chinese hand laundry next door and through their back door connected to the defunct tavern, through that, and into Fontana's. It was gutted and empty.

I looked out the window and saw that that buildings on the corner had been demolished. I thought, "I'm next."



Post Script: While I dream of evicted New Yorkers, other people are dreaming about the presidential candidates. Check out these blogs for those dreams:

• I Dream of Barack
• I Dream of Hillary

*Everyday Chatter

Life's been hard for the shoe stores of 8th Street. Rugged Sole is holding a "Business Sucks" sale as most of its neighbors have shut down:


Coney Island opens! Perhaps for the final season of Astroland. [BIB]

Rundowns of recent construction accidents as the rush to super-gentrification continues. [Gothamist] [Lost City]

These days, many of us live anxiously in the shadow of teetering cranes. [City Room] [EVG]

Others tremble in the shadow of cell-phone towers. [PMFA]

I wrote about Extra Place in January--more recently, the Real Deal revealed the developers' dream for a "park-like environment that fosters a sense of community with lots of small retail shops and cafés." Whose sense of community will it foster? Just take a look at the cream-of-wheat folks in the rendering below. And here's the prediction: "It's like what Jeffrey did to the Meatpacking District." Couldn't be more prescient! [RD]

P.S. Both Curbed and Eater picked up my coverage of this debacle, and their readers' comments are worth checking out--for once, most are in agreement this plan is putrid.

Panic sets in as Brooklyn liquor store changes hands. [Brklynometry]

Miss Heather invents a fun new game: Gentrification Bingo! This is good stuff--send her your contributions. [NYShitty]

Ronald McDonald gets on stage at The Apollo--and a small note tells us that the Apollo is 1 in a total of only 4 landmarked buildings in Harlem, a neighborhood on the brink of being plucked clean by super-gentrification. [NYO]

Since Fontana's officially closed, Angelo has been going in to the shop every morning. I've seen him sitting by the window, reading an Italian newspaper, and I thought, Maybe he's holding out for a possible reprieve, maybe there's hope. Then I saw this sign:

*Everyday Chatter

A giant silver penis with hairy testicles, outlined in hot pink, appears above the doomed one-stories at 10th and 4th--soon to be hidden by a towering hotel?


Fontana's shoe repair shop has been gutted. The sign is gone. There's a Dumpster out front. And three workers have managed to completely rip out the floors, walls, and ceiling (sob):


Shuttered CBGB's 313 Gallery opens as Morrison Hotel Gallery and one blogger who attended is "encouraged & amazed to see a creative based business actually thriving in the current climate." [Stupefaction]

Element Beauty Lounge covers up the great artifacts exposed by the facade teardown at 10th and 3rd. Why they would enclose a gorgeous, antique cast-iron column in sheet metal I cannot fathom:


DKNY and Pottery Barn get eaten by Abercrombie as the Vongerichtifiers devour each other across the Manhattan landscape. [Gothamist]

And someone, somewhere will no doubt shell out the $200 to buy the latest banned-in-America Abercrombie sales catalog. [NYPost] via Racked

Don't get too excited--that Coney Island roller rink pretty much proves to have been nothing more than a celebrity-infused publicity stunt for Tommy Hilfiger and Glamour magazine. What a tease! [Observer]

Next Thursday, April 3, catch a reading and peepshow about Diane Arbus' work on Hubert's Flea Circus, one of the great wonders of lost Times Square. [Freebird Books]

What's left of 6th Avenue? Not much--but what's there is good. [ForgottenNY]

*Everyday Chatter

Some good news for fans of the P&G Bar: "Mr. Chahalis now plans to reopen the 66-year-old neighborhood institution just a few blocks away, after signing a new 20-year lease on the former Evelyn lounge space at 380 Columbus Avenue; same familial name, same friendly service." But can they take that gorgeous neon sign with them? [NYO]

...And will it fit over the Evelyn Lounge? Kind of amazing the P&G would replace a joint once frequented by mochatini-drinking, "cash-wadded, stogie-smoking" types.

Tenants stick it to landlord in the EV with tumor teardowns. Maybe the 7th St tumor will be next. [Curbed]

The IKEA hellhole pic? It's the real deal. Ham Hock adds a nice wide shot with lots of real details:


With cobblers doing well in the new economy, more reason to cry for Fontana's and hope for David's (he's still on the ropes, so bring him your tired soles!). [NYDN]

Visit Gowanus Canal in the 1970s. [GL]

Greenpoint turning into Park Slope? Cause it smells like babies. [NYS]

David's Shoe Repair

First we lost Fontana's. Now it looks like David's might be the next to vanish.

Yesterday I got an alarming email from a reader, who wrote: "David's Shoe Repair at 74 East 7th Street is closing this week after 28 years in business. Same old story: landlord wants to double the rent. Just walked in with a pair of shoes that needed fixing. He said I'd have to pick them up before the end of the week."

I've been worrying about David's for awhile now, but all is not (yet) lost.



Last night I went by to talk with the cobbler. From what I could understand, he's not sure what's happening with his lease, but he hopes to last until after the new year, perhaps until July, as long as he can sell and repair enough shoes to pay that new rent.

He needs your business, so go to David's. He even sells those trendy little Worishofer clogs, and recently I noticed he had some items from the Paris Hilton Footwear collection. Anything to stay alive.



Over the years, he has fixed many soles and heels for me. He has shined my shoes and replaced their laces. But he will only take a pair, never just one shoe. Try giving him just one shoe and he'll say, "I can't take one shoe! My wife will die!"

A cobbler's superstition, I guess.



David's shop goes back in time. It has the best Cat's Paw decal in the window. She looks like a 1940s girl, yellowed with age. While David's has been in this storefront for 28 years, it's been a shoe repair shop for much longer.

You can see the decal here too, back when David's was A. Brym's shoe repair shop. This photo is from the book The Lower East Side, by Edmund V. Gillon, Jr. I think it's from the 1960s:



After it was Brym's, it made a 1980s appearance in Moscow on the Hudson, its yellow sign printed partly in Cyrillic lettering. Not yet David's, but still a shoe repair shop.



Yes, that's an egg shop on the block. You can watch a movie of the shop and read about it here. And while we're talking about the recent wave of transformation on 7th Street (Addukkan and more), here's another vintage shot, this one from Brian Rose's fantastic Lower East Side Project:



This place is still a tailor/dry cleaners; though, like David's, it has changed hands and design elements many times over the years. Note in all these photos the tenement doorways with the decorated marble columns. They really knew how to make affordable housing back in the day. They also knew how to fix your shoes.

• More photos of David's

*Everyday Chatter

Frances "Evelyn" Dudley, the very friendly woman who used to panhandle outside the fence of St. Mark's Church on the corner of 11th Street, has passed away. There will be a memorial service for her tomorrow.


A tipster writes in about the imminent closing of indie Hell's Kitchen (formerly EV) record shop Future Legend: "As I approached the store my heart sank as the big orange sign of death announcing 50% all stock tipped me off to the latest record store tragedy to hit the city... I got the sense they were closing fast and furiously. Not sure they will even be there tomorrow." Read more about it in the Times and News. [Beware otB]

A 101-year-old pigment plant closes in Staten Island and that means no more pink pigeons. [NY Times]

The Fontana Shoe Repair family hopes to donate Angelo's 75-year-old cobbler tools to a museum. [Villager]

The above article also names Fontana's evicting landlord, Mark Scharfman, who bears the distinction of having been dubbed by the NY Press one of the 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers and, I quote, "The Oil Can Harry of modern-day New York." Here's more from the Voice and Observer.

The Chow Mein sign is dark again and last night Shoolbred's big red sign was ablaze, announcing its opening. Shoolbred's replaced Jade Mountain and is also sporting some fancy wooden stained-glass doors. Down by the Hipster and its commenters provide a review. "Jammed" and "Jager shots" kind of says it all.


I spoke too soon when I speculated that the XXX video shop in the doomed low-rise group of buildings at 14th and 3rd would survive to grind itself against the butt of the shiny new tower to come. They have taken their dildos and buddy booths and moved to Christopher Street, the way of all flesh...

Pick Up Your Shoes

Last month I reported that the East Village's A. Fontana Shoe Repair will be closing after 45 years in business. Yesterday, it became "official" with Mr. Fontana's "Lost My Lease" signs going up in the windows.



You have until February 28 to pick up your shoes. If you don't have any shoes to pick up, visit the place anyway. Buy a can of weatherproofing spray or a pair of shoelaces. Just go. Come March 1, it will all be gone.