With more people in this throw-away culture wearing sneakers and rubbery flip-flops both summer and winter in our California climate, it may seem as though the kindly neighborhood cobbler of yesterday might be a prime candidate for the endangered species list.
Don’t tell that to Rudy Grasseschi, who owns and, with his son Dino, operates The Cobblers, a shoe repair shop on Foothill Boulevard near A Street in Hayward.
To call it just a shoe repair shop does not do justice to the spacious store. The front portion of the store has new shoes, such as Uggs, KEEN, and several other brands tastefully on display, along with accessory items: belts, hats, fanny packs, and purses to name a few.
Moving further into the store, one senses the heart of the business. One wall boasts a mounted elk head, and several generations of Grasseschi family history in photographs, including an interior shot of the family’s original store in Hayward.
Rudy’s father, Alfred, opened Alfred & Sons at B and Castro, (now Mission Blvd) in 1932.
Rudy, along with his three brothers, learned the family trade at his father’s elbow, as his father had learned it from his father in Italy. That appears to be the only way to learn this craft anymore.
According to Grasseschi, instruction in the craft was once available at the Tracy Correctional Facility, and at Laney Trade School in Oakland, but “In this day and age, today, there’s no one teaching shoe repair,” he said.
The economy hasn’t helped the business as one would expect, but it hasn’t really hurt it either. Cheap shoes are easily replaced.
“Business is flat,” he said.
Grasseschi opined, “People think that with the shoe repair industry, and with the economy down, that people will have their shoes repaired.
“If you go walking down the street, or in the mall, you’ll see that 99 percent of the young people are wearing tennis shoes; and tennis shoes they don’t get repaired,” he said.