The Disappearing Shoe Repairman

Gentrification Will Make Everything a Relic

I walked past a group of older out-of-towners on a tour of my neighborhood. Which is weird to begin with. I don’t understand why anyone wants to tour the boring blocks I grew up on.

Meanwhile, I had just come from the local shoe repairman’s shop. A shop that has been here for a generation. His little shoe store is somehow still standing while literally every building around him is becoming a luxury condominium. The local hardware shop and key maker is also gone. I’m sure the shoe repairman is next. Which makes me sad. People like him and the work he does are relics of a bygone area.

No one cares anymore about what he does or values the contribution he makes to a neighborhood….yet alone a society.

He works hard doing an unglamorous task in a store the size of my kitchen.

But I appreciate him and people like him. Blue collar workers like him are the fabric of this country and I’m sad to see that go away. He’s an immigrant as well, because of course he is. Immigrants are the backbone of this country.

Those tourists will one day be gone too. After all, how interesting or exciting will it be to walk around a neighborhood with a bunch of generic, poorly designed buildings no one can afford to live in anyway.