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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER Old-world repair store hanging on by a shoelace By ANDREA JAMES Customers come and go in the little, old-fashioned shop that smells of
sweet leather. Owner Raymond Angel tells his story between visits. Dalton, who drives a utility truck for the city of Seattle, had stopped by for a morning hello. Everybody, he says, loves Raymond Angel. A Sephardic Jew, Angel is a round man with a bushy mustache and an easy smile. His words are calming and soft -- he doesn't trust fast talkers, he says -- and his fingers are calloused from his craft. He is a third-generation cobbler whose business, Angel's Shoe Repair, has been in Seattle for 94 years. His grandfather, Joseph, migrated to the city from the island of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea and opened shop in 1912. Angel's father, Eli, also was an immigrant and took over when Joseph died in 1936. After the Great Depression, the business left its downtown location and moved to Capitol Hill in 1941, where it remains today, struggling to hold on in an era when people buy new shoes instead of repairing old ones. Like its 58-year-old owner, the shop is full of old-world charm. Angel uses a stitcher from 1912 and a sewing machine patented in 1880. A chalkboard sign out front advertises cut keys for $1.75. Libby Harvey, 57, of Capitol Hill, walks in to pick up her key. The total bill, with tax, is $1.90, and she apologizes that she only has a $20 bill. "Are you in the neighborhood?" Angel asks. "Just pay me later." Harvey loves the old-fashioned, personal feeling that she gets from this store. Angel has just enough business to cover the rent, which keeps rising -- 20 percent this year alone. On top of base rent, Angel pays his portion of property tax, insurance and building maintenance. "The bars and restaurants chase away the small businesses," he said. A spokesman who collects the rent said the increases are fair and in line with neighborhood trends. "Business is business. Personal is personal," said Joel Ostroff with Stanley Real Estate Inc., which manages the property for ABO Investments LLC. "He has been there a long time and he has been a good tenant," said Ostroff, whose father is the registered agent for ABO. "If people aren't buying the right kind of shoes to support his business, that's truly not ABO's fault." A blonde 20-something woman in a gray pea coat and green checked
scarf walks in and plops two chunky black boots on the counter. "You're bubbling all over here," he said, thumbing the
thick rubber sole. He looks up at her. "You work in a restaurant?" It wasn't hard to figure out, he explains: "Rubber is made with
oil and there's grease in the kitchens." "When I grew up I didn't respect him because he was just a shoe
repairman," he said. "That embarrassment left me when I started
working with him. He was very intelligent." "My dad did not want me to go into shoe repair; he never taught
it to me as I was growing up," he said. "And I'm not teaching
my son." "You must do a lot of walking," Angel surmises. She smiles. "I do." Angel tried putting his justice degree to work, and took a King County job working with criminals. "I was gullible -- totally gullible," he said, laughing. "I didn't belong in the job, I had no street smarts. I wasn't doing too well in my field of study." It was 1975 and Angel was jobless. He turned to his dad. "I needed money, he needed help," he said. He's been a shoe
repairman ever since. Angel lives next door to the shop and works six days a week -- no fairy tale elves to help him -- but says he doesn't mind because business has been picking up. The wall behind the work counter is covered with shoes. "I haven't seen this many shoes in many years," he said. He theorizes that people are saving pennies for gas, and once again having old shoes repaired. Women's high heels are the big moneymaker -- $7.35 to replace the heel. Other prices vary depending upon how much work the shoe needs, and how much the customer can afford. There are no prices listed anywhere in the store. "My dad taught me to be good with immigrants. Whenever an immigrant came in he gave them a special price," Angel said. A French bulldog outside the store strains toward the shop window. "Lulu wants his treat!" says the man at the other end of the leash. He walks in, pulls a Milk-Bone out of a box by the window, salutes Angel, feeds the dog and continues on his way. The neighborhood dogs love Angel, too. Even when the economy slumps, people still need shoes, and that's what keeps Angel in business. Plus, there's not a ton of competition. The phone book lists just 21 cobblers in the city of Seattle for a population of almost 600,000. But to set himself further apart, Angel keeps a collection of "Star Wars" and super hero piggy banks that wiggle and shake when a coin is dropped in. "I love to show the kids when they come into the shop the toys -- my toys!" Angel said, and then made Jar Jar Binks do the boogie. Darth Vader raised his saber and R2-D2 spun. "I spend a fortune on batteries." The colorful plastic toys contrast with black-and-white photos of Angel's ancestors. On a shelf on another wall are four copies of Robert Fulghum's best-selling "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten." Angel's Shoe Repair has its own chapter. "Some Angels I know can fix your soles," Fulghum wrote. "And mend your soul at the same time." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- P-I reporter Andrea James can be reached at 206-448-8124 or andreajames@seattlepi.com. © 1998-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer |