Sole survivors

Boston's bootblacks haven't lost their luster, even as their trade fades

Eugene Bly picks up a toothbrush and dips it into a special potion - a liquid concoction whose ingredients he refuses to share.

"I don't tell nobody what that is," says the shoeshine man, as he cleans the sides of a pair of worn dusty boots on Boylston Street one recent morning.

In his buttoned-down dress shirt and slacks, Bly doesn't look like your typical shoeshine man.

A Scally cap hides most of his hair, some of it poking out gray at the temples. And his shoes - the shine on them sparkles under a cool autumn sun. As he works, Bly eloquently expounds on his longevity in his trade - 30 years.

"The first shoes I ever shined was a sailor's, but I got polish all over his socks," he recalls as a customer sits on a cushion placed on two stacked crates on Boylston Street, with her boots perched on a small wooden stand. Cars and pedestrians swoosh by.

"The sailor liked the shine so much, and instead of the 10 cents or whatever that I was charging then, he gave me a dollar. The man who owned the shop, though, said he couldn't have someone who got polish on customers' socks. So he let me go."

Most days, Bly, 68, totes his crate and stand from his Chelsea home to a spot outside the Hynes T stop on Mass. Ave.

These days, he has little company as an independent bootblack.

Classified by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as personal care and service workers (the category also includes butlers, chaperones, and call girls), many shoeshiners work for someone else, servicing hotels and office buildings in the city. Some work in barbershops, at the airport, or at shoe-repair shops, says Jim McFarland, historian with the Shoe Service Institute of America, which comprises retail shoe-repair operators.

But whether they're independent like Bly or employed by a company, their services are less and less in demand. For one thing, their client base is shrinking. As the sneaker culture rises, wingtip wearers are on the wane - more and more men prefer to dress down rather than dress up. At most shoe-repair shops, machines have taken the place of bootblacks. And then there's the demise of quality footwear: Today's shoes are inexpensive and easier to replace than to maintain or repair.

Some bootblacks, like Bly, have rolled with the times and now also offer cleaning services for leather sneakers and bags.

"Back in the day, people took care of their shoes . . . and passed them down a generation," says McFarland.

"Today you don't find people 35 or younger getting their shoes repaired . . . or getting them polished."

A shoeshine, depending on the bootblack and the footwear, can cost from $3 to $10, and some bootblacks make $75 to $125 a day with tips, McFarland says. It's backbreaking work of long hours spent bent over for not much pay. "It's a hard way to make a living," says McFarland.

Emily Gelbert is struggling in a trade dominated by older black men. For the past 22 years, Gelbert has run her own shoeshine business, A Shining Example, staffing stands at the Boston Marriott Copley Place and the Westin Copley Place, as well as office buildings like One Beacon Street downtown. Her company is the only bootblack parlor listed in the current Yellow Book for Greater Boston under shoe shining.

Like the other bootblacks interviewed, she didn't aspire to be a shoeshiner. But once she started, she never stopped. "I find it very spiritual," says Gelbert. "It's kind of tied with feet washing. You become their friend, their therapist."

Her staff of seven, including two part-timers, does the bulk of the work now; Gelbert says she developed carpal-tunnel syndrome shining shoes. In addition to the regular gigs, Gelbert's company is hired for special events and to visit individual offices, going desk to desk shining shoes for $5 a pair.

Lately, business has been hurting. Some of her clients were brokerage firms that were hit hard by the Wall Street collapse, she said.

But Gelbert says she can trace the decline back further than that, to the 2001 terrorist attacks. She lost customers then when some events canceled in Boston, hotels scaled back amenities like shoeshines, and office buildings tightened security in their lobbies, which meant fewer patrons from off the streets could stop in for a shine. "Everything has hurt us; 9/11 has pulled the rug out from under me," she says.

At Egleston Square in Roxbury, Lawson Barber Shop resurrected its shoeshine service a few years ago. But the stand sits empty most days.

"It's been slow, to tell you the truth, because people wear sneakers now," says William Thomas Sr., the 72-year-old shoeshiner. Thomas used to work part time, but he doesn't come around much anymore.

In Dudley Square, Allah M. Allah is looking for another bootblack to pamper the footwear of men who come in for a haircut and shave at his barbershop, Hair Care Center LLC. But so far he's had no luck finding someone to staff the stately shoeshine stand that sits in a corner, rising high above the floor like a throne.

"The last guy who was in here was about a month ago," he says.

A few blocks away, that last guy at Allah's - known to most folks simply as EC - brags about the service he's provided in Dorchester and Roxbury for more than 30 years.

"No one can do what I can do," says the 80-year-old, who works eight hours a day at his newest gig, in Dudley Square's Turning Heads beauty and barber shop.

His toolbox is packed with blackened rags, fraying toothbrushes, and secret potions filling bottles that once held soda and dishwashing liquid. And he's got proof of the magic he works with them - an album stuffed with Polaroids, pages and pages of tired shoes brought to life, dull shoes in bold new colors, plain shoes now adorned with shiny tips.

"I don't just shine the shoes," he says, displaying a toothless grin. "I go inside the shoes and open the pores. I put the color back in the shoes. You can't find no other place like mine."

A steady stream of men in suits flows through Ismael Torres's rented two-seat stand in the lobby of Sixty State Street. After each man leaves, Torres fills a bowl under the seat of the stand with shoe cleaner, ready for the next customer.

He doesn't say too much and speaks softly. He works fast, finishing each customer within a few minutes for a cost of $5 to $7. As for the make of the shoe, he doesn't wonder.

"I don't ask about that," says Torres, who is in his 60s. "I just clean them."

At South Station, Edward Nsubuga is working two customers in his three-seat stand. It gets like that sometimes - a mad rush - but not always.

Nsubuga, 52, doesn't own the stand. He gets paid weekly, and keeps the tips. He works at South Station 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., charging $5 for a basic shine and more if the shoe is in bad shape. With the economic downturn, he says he's seeing fewer customers.

"Sometimes I sit here with my paper and someone comes and wakes me up and says 'Hey, are you open for business?' " says the bootblack who has been working for General Shoe & Luggage Repair at South Station for eight years.

"You wake up yawning. Then you sit with the paper and wait for another customer."

Meghan Irons can be reached at mirons@globe.com.