In age of reboots, shop still takes a shine to restoring footwear

Originally published Saturday, August 23, 1997

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Most of Danny Swanson's customers are well-heeled.

And well they ought to be, since he's the third generation behind the counter at Swanson's Shoe Repair on North 45th Street.

If Wallingford is the Birkenstock capital of Seattle, Swanson's is where old Birkies go for retreads. It's also where the horsey set goes for re-shoeing . . . the riders, that is.

"I wouldn't bring my riding boots anywhere else! All the tack shops around tell you to take your boots to Swanson's," said Lynda Cushman, who brought two pair of expensive knee-high riding boots from Kirkland for refitting.

That's mostly because George Swanson, Danny's 69-year-old retired father, isn't retired at all. Even though Danny, 40, is the sole proprietor, George still puts on his cobbler's apron several days each week, mostly repairing fine leather handbags and luggage or refitting riding boots.

Expensive riding boots -- are there any other kind? -- that are custom sewn to exact measurements often need refitting. Some have to be made smaller. Others need sewn-in gussets to make them larger.

"My dad might tell a woman customer: 'You must be working out or jogging a lot because your calves are more muscular.' But Grandpa Swanson wasn't quite as sensitive," Danny noted.

"Yeah, my dad would say something like: 'Lady, you've put on quite a lot of weight!' " George added.

But George Swanson is a shoe-in as best boot man in the area. And the tiny shop at 2305 N. 45th St., cluttered with machinery and materials, is where the boots of most Seattle Police Department horse unit and motorcycle patrol officers get serviced and protected. George even sews in zippers for the big rubber overboots they wear in winter.

"I like the work," said George. "I started when I was 12, going downtown after school and on weekends on the streetcar to my father's shop on Union Street, between Sixth and Seventh."

That's where George Swanson Sr., a Swedish immigrant, first opened what was known then as Progressive Shoe Repair. His son and his grandson both learned the shoe-repair business from the ground up, "with a broom and a dustpan!" said Danny's father.

"My brother, Dave, and I would walk down Corliss (Avenue) from our house to the shop after school and on Saturdays, and Dad would let us pull old heels off shoes. We thought we were playing and having fun, but we were really learning the trade," Danny said.

Sipping his morning coffee on the old bench from Grandpa Swanson's first downtown shoe shop, George Swanson seemed quite content with his life's work that he now balances with gardening and grandchildren. "When I finally decided to 'retire,' and turn the business over to Danny, we had a little party here, and I gave him the broom and a big box of Band-Aids and a bottle of aspirin. It all goes with running a shoe shop."

If the need for brooms and aspirins and bandages hasn't changed, not much else in the shop has changed since Grandpa Swanson moved it to Wallingford in the winter of 1945-46. There used to be neon tubing around the big shoe business sign out front over the No. 30 and 44 bus stop bench, George said. "But I stopped getting it replaced because every time there was a snowstorm, it got knocked out by snowballs."

Inside, Danny has added a front retail area where customers can see and choose their own polishes, dyes, waterproofing, laces and, yes, even shoe horns. Old photographs, and an old white porcelain incinerator, and a pair of World War II combat boots add just the right amount of old-shop atmosphere.

Behind the front service counter, the line of old green Landis sanders, buffers and stitchers is the same that Grandpa Swanson put in new more than 50 years ago. And there are several foot-treadle Singer stitching machines behind that front retail area, where George does his careful stitch-in-time work on boots, luggage, etc.

Swanson's is full-service in a sense that George or George Sr. might have understood when people bought leather shoes to last (that's a sort of shoemaker's joke because a "last" is the footlike form on which shoes used to be made and oftentimes still are fitted for repair work).

Nowadays, the little shoe shop between the bicycle store and Al's Tavern repairs and reconditions not only regular leather shoes, work shoes and various riding boots, but also, as the sign in the window indicates, all the Birkenstocklike sandals, Velcro, purses, backpacks, zippers, jeans buttons, soft luggage, leashes, leather jackets and, believe it or not, old baseball gloves and punching bags.

"I've also gotten into orthopedic shoe-reconstruction work over the years, and it's very rewarding. I rebuilt soccer and other sports shoes for one young man who had a 5-inch difference in the length of his legs, and he was able to make his school teams in several sports," Danny said.

The slogan started by Grandpa Swanson -- "If George Can't Fix 'Em, Skip 'Em" -- holds as true in today's throwaway climate as it did 50 years ago. "We'll get people in with shoes or Birks that have been redone three and four times, to where there's not much left to work on," Danny said. But the customers say: 'These are just so comfortable; Please try to do them again!"

Or, someone will find an old pair of Acme boots in an attic, where they've been both a home and meal for some wayward squirrels. Or a younger customer will want her Doc Martens resoled and restitched and has tried unsuccessfully to have several other shops do the work.

It ain't cheap, so Danny advises customers on the front end that a complete sole and heel replacement might run $35 to $40. But where else in town can you pay an extra $3.50 for an unlimited number of free shines and re-dye of the welt edges on your shoes anytime you're in the neighborhood? "One customer drops off a pair of shoes every week for shining," Danny said. "It's actually a good way for me to maintain the shoe and tell him when he's about due for another heel or sole job."

Danny doesn't wear out shoe leather walking to work because most days he rides his bicycle from his home near Green Lake. But he inherits a whole lot of shoe repair business from the families of his brother and two sisters.

"Which is all right, because my sisters pay me in cookies!" he said.

Jon Hahn is a staff columnist who writes three times a week in the P-I.