EditorialEduard Shimonov waits for customers at Cobbler Express, his shoe-repair shop and shoeshine stand in the atrium of 60 Wall Street, above the Wall Street subway station in lower Manhattan, on Dec. 20, 2021. (Benjamin Norman/The New York Times)
EditorialEduard Shimonov waits for customers at Cobbler Express, his shoe-repair shop and shoeshine stand in the atrium of 60 Wall Street, above the Wall Street subway station in lower Manhattan, on Dec. 20, 2021. (Benjamin Norman/The New York Times)
EditorialJoseph Murray, known as Ty, with a customer in Washington’s Union Station on July 13, 2021, soon after reopening the shoeshine stand that he closed at the start of the pandemic. (Alyssa Schukar/The New York Times)
EditorialShoe cleaner Jenny Gomez, 49, at the shoeshine stand in Grand Central Terminal where she works in midtown Manhattan on June 30, 2021. (Todd Heisler/The New York Times)
EditorialGentlemen at a shoeblacks shop in Paris, 1820. An English parson shares snuff with a French officer seated on a bench while shoeshine boys polish their shoes. One customer reads a newspaper, one shows his boots to an old shoeblack. Doctor Syntax at the...
EditorialGentlemen at a shoeblacks shop in Paris, 1820. An English parson shares snuff with a French officer seated on a bench while shoeshine boys polish their shoes. One customer reads a newspaper, one shows his boots to an old shoeblack. Doctor Syntax at the...