For Deirdre Clemente, buying good-quality shoes is not a luxury. It's an investment.
"I'm willing to spend money on a good pair of shoes because they feel better on your foot and they last longer," she says.
She has them repaired at Palermo's Shoe & Athletic Repair Center in her Lawrenceville neighborhood. With a fresh pair of soles and a new coat of polish, her Gucci loafers or Charles David high heels look as good as new.
Owner Bucky Palermo, whom she calls "the best cobbler in Pittsburgh," also has repaired Clemente's rain boots and put new cork soles on her Birkenstock sandals.
"You go because his craftsmanship's great," Clemente says. "You go back because he has a great personality."
But Clemente probably will have to find a new source before long. Palermo, who will be 79 next month, says he has no one to take over the business after he retires. His son, Tony, 54, helps him out on weekends, but he works a full-time job in the mortgage industry.
"A lot this stuff, I'm the only one who can do it," Bucky Palermo says.
The number of shoe-repair shops, with their tang of polish and glue, has declined nearly 90 percent in the past 50 years.
In the late '50s and early '60s, there were nearly 70,000 shoe-repair shops in the country, says Don Rinaldi, president of the Shoe Service Institute of America. Today, there are 7,000, he says.
The industry suffered when athletic shoes began to be worn outside the gym, tennis court and baseball diamond, Rinaldi says. Then came cheap import dress shoes, which were worn and then discarded.
"When you're paying $70 for a pair of shoes, you're not going to pay $80 to fix them," he says.
Complicating a cobbler's task are the materials that today's shoes are made of. Instead of leather, most are made with amalgams of plastic and rubber.
"If you're just talking about leather soles, I could do a lot of shoes in one day," Palermo says. Instead, he has to figure out what particular cement or primer to use to bond a rubber sole to a vinyl upper.
"It's a struggle to try to figure out what you want to use."
Good cobblers can stretch a pair of shoes to fit, change heel tips from hard to nonskid rubber or replace eyelets and other hardware. They can prolong the life of the shoe with protective soles and heel savers. Most shoe-repair shops also repair handbags, leather coats and luggage. Some even repair snowshoes.
"There's a lot of things that we can fix that people don't think we can," says Ron Mancuso, owner of Mancuso's Shoe Repair in Greensburg. "On the better shoes, you can almost fix anything."
Many cobblers in the Pittsburgh region learned from their fathers and grandfathers. But most say they're the last of their line.
Bucky Palermo's nephew, Mike, owns Fox Chapel Shoe Service.
"There is nobody to do this trade," Mike Palermo says. "That generation, I think, is going to be gone."
At Ullrich Shoe Repair, Downtown, they still repair about 300 pairs of shoes per week, mostly women's dress shoes. The front of the shop features a shoeshine stand and signed photographs of actors like Bruce Willis and Jack Nicholson. On the counter, under glass, are letters from satisfied customers, including one guy who sends his cowboy boots from Driftwood, Texas, to Pittsburgh to be resoled.
Owner Rex Streno joined the business in 1981.
"There were six guys working in the back at the time," he says. "There were four shoeshine guys. It was like a factory."
Streno and cobbler Paul Manno spend up to 10 hours a day in the small rear workroom, whose collection of nails, pliers, knives, gluepots, buffing wheels and hulking Landis sewing machines conjure up an atmosphere redolent of Santa's workshop. When removing a sole from a shoe, Streno will hold it in place by using a foot-shaped anvil called a last.
"If you get a good pair of shoes, you can re-sole them four or five times," Streno says.
Ironically, most old-timers have all the shoe-repair work they can handle, he says.
"All the shoemakers that are left are hiding out in little neighborhoods," Streno says. "They can't afford to pay anybody. They don't want to be in high-populated areas because they can't handle the work."
With the recession still crimping budgets, it can make sense to make your shoes last instead of buying new ones. Shoe-repair experts offer these tips:
• Leather is still king. Whenever possible, buy shoes that have leather linings. "I like a good leather upper. I prefer a leather sole even for dress," says Alexander Wahal, owner of Alexander's Shoe Repair in McCandless. "To me it's just classic styling. Your feet breathe better in leather."
• Don't wait until a shoe has a hole in the sole before getting it repaired. But if that's the case, cobblers insist they can still fix the shoe.
• Before polishing shoes, the Shoe Service Institute of America Web site recommends removing excess dirt with a leather cleaner, then applying a leather conditioner. Apply polish and finish with a weatherproofing agent.
• Use a paste or cream polish if possible.
• Remove salt stains from shoes no longer than 24 hours after use. While some recommend a solution of water and white vinegar, it can stain "nude" leather shoes.
• Make sure shoes are comfortable on first wear, says Mike Palermo, owner of Fox Chapel Shoe Service. Walk around in them for at least 10 minutes. Buy shoes in the afternoon, when your foot swells to a slightly larger size.
• The better quality the shoe, the longer a cobbler can make it last. "If they buy a good shoe, it can be fixed," says Ron Mancuso of Mancuso's Shoe Repair in Greensburg. "It can save a lot of money. To get them fixed for $40, you get the exact amount of time you had from them from the first buy."
