[HN Gopher] The next generation of cobblers are focused on sneakers
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The next generation of cobblers are focused on sneakers
Author : rmason
Score : 39 points
Date : 2021-09-22 05:06 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gearpatrol.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gearpatrol.com)
| mc32 wrote:
| So, since it's become more fashionable to make things recyclable
| and re-usable, why not mandate that makers of athletic footwear
| make them so that they can be repaired -at least swap in new
| soles. Else they get taxed with an enviro-impact fee.
|
| The soles _tend_ to be the first things to go, mesh uppers also
| wear out. But it would be neat if they were resolable _with ease_
| and not have to, erm, shoehorn a solution.
| wrnr wrote:
| What if X is more reusable than Y but Y is the thing that is on
| the books. Now you have to lobby the government. Fun. Also,
| it's very hard for a bureaucrat or anyone else to make a
| judgement on what is going to be the most efficient what to
| organise the blue economy. Every day people invent new things,
| my understanding is that recycling and re-ellasticing bio-
| polymer is there way to go, but time will tell.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| I'm surprised to hear how bad a decline in shoe repair shops
| there's been. Shoes are one of the last consumer goods you can
| actually get repaired.
|
| There's shoes, sewing machines, vacuum cleaners, watches/clocks,
| firearms (if you consider them a consumer good) and ... what
| else?
|
| Phone screens and batteries, I guess, if you don't just upgrade
| early instead of repairing it.
|
| White goods, in theory, but the last 7 years I've had two
| landlords each replace a washer, dryer, and dishwasher that were
| beyond economical repair. I actually replaced the drum rollers
| and axles on the second dryer, but it was part of a stacked set,
| and when the washer died, the only option was to replace both.
|
| Garments occasionally go to the tailor, but how many people truly
| get anything repaired vs altered to fit?
|
| Am I missing anything here? I'm not including cars, as I don't
| know that I can call them a consumer good.
|
| I suppose living in a city warps your perspective on the
| availability of shoe repair. I had work done at two separate
| shops in the Boston area and could probably find three or four
| more without much looking. That seems pretty prevalent to me, but
| I guess it probably isn't relative to the days before business
| casual was invented.
| handrous wrote:
| > I'm surprised to hear how bad a decline in shoe repair shops
| there's been. Shoes are one of the last consumer goods you can
| actually get repaired.
|
| I'm legitimately worried that by the time any of my leather
| shoes & boots need re-soling (another couple years, probably)
| cobblers will be too rare and expensive to justify re-soling
| for anything but really high-end shoes (say, $500+, which are
| out of my league; I don't like wearing things that'd make me
| _very_ sad if they got damaged).
| kenjackson wrote:
| The title for this confused me. I read half the article expecting
| it to be about why advances in boots made it so the next
| generation of cobblers wouldn't repair them. A better
| title/summary, IMO is "The next generation of shoe cobblers are
| focused on sneakers".
| routerl wrote:
| i.e. "Cobblers repair shoes of all kinds", which sounds an
| awful lot like a tautology.
|
| But it's actually a good point. As a practical minded consumer
| of clothes (read: unfashionable), this article did make me
| wonder why I've gotten so used to buying new shoes when my old
| ones wear out, instead of taking them to a cobbler.
|
| I suspect the answer is that I can probably order a new pair
| for less cost than I could repair an old one, but I actually
| haven't checked the truth of this hypothesis in over a decade.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I am under the assumption only dress shoes or similar can be
| repaired. I cannot imagine it is possible to repair a pair of
| running shoes or sneakers.
|
| As a side note, I would change careers if I had to wear dress
| shoes so much that they got to the state of needing to be
| repaired.
| gambiting wrote:
| So actually I had a pair of "unrepairable" sneakers
| repaired, a PS150 pair of Ecco shoes where the sole
| completely wore out, I kept asking around if they could be
| possibly repaired and found a cobbler in Edinburgh that
| replaced the sole for PS50 - it was perfect fit, they
| somehow gave them a brand new lease of life.
|
| But of course the main problem here is that you could
| easily buy a new pair of shoes for PS50.....
| mikestew wrote:
| Resoling running shoes has been around since I started
| paying attention to such things in the early 80s. (I'm more
| of a Shoo Goo guy myself.) One example:
|
| https://nushoe.com/running-shoes-repair.html
| Aloha wrote:
| Nice dress cowboy boots make better and more comfortable
| dress shoes than dress shoes.
|
| You might not like the stylistic statement, but they're
| actually shoes you can spend 18 hours on your feet.
| handrous wrote:
| You can find _something_ comfortable in nearly any boot
| style, since they 're almost all based on designs that
| were actually intended to be used for long stretches of
| physical activity. Work-boot styles (obviously),
| equestrian styles (western, Chelsea, jodhpur), military
| (chukkas, "jump boots"), and hunting (which even includes
| most "dress" styles, which are typically based on rural
| British hunting/stalking boots) all have practical-wear
| lineage, and usually are little removed from the
| originals, if at all.
| davidw wrote:
| Yep. "Roper" boots are especially good if you want
| something a bit less 'cowboy'. For instance:
| https://www.tecovas.com/products/the-
| earl?variant=3168641063... (I can't speak to that brand,
| I don't own any Tecovas).
|
| For day to day, I got myself some of these, because they
| can be resoled and repaired and are tough:
| https://www.redwingshoes.com/work/mens/soft-
| toe/SuperSole-01... - they are not very stylish, but then
| again neither am I so we're even.
| routerl wrote:
| I'm on the same page.
|
| When my fancy dress shoes need repair or replacing, _even
| I_ can tell what work it needs, though I can 't perform
| that work myself. It needs a new sole, or new stitching, or
| wtv.
|
| With sneakers, I'm utterly trained to think "well now it's
| trash" rather than "could this be repaired". And, thanks to
| this article, I'm gonna try to have the "how do I repair
| it" thought first, instead of the "how do I replace it"
| thought.
|
| Which is weird, because this is absolutely already how I
| think about laptops and cellphones.
| handrous wrote:
| The pictures in the story look more like fashion-oriented
| mods to shoes, than straight repairs or a traditional re-
| soling. AFAIK you'd pretty much have to rip off the whole
| bottom half of a typical glue-construction tennis shoe to
| replace the sole, so you're practically rebuilding the
| thing, at that point. Look at the wide sewn-on strips
| around the bottom of the example shoes, just above the welt
| --ten-to-one that's covering up (or repairing) where the
| damage was done, removing the original sole.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we'll use your title above. Thanks!
|
| I also took the 'shoe' out of 'shoe cobblers' - isn't that like
| saying 'clothes tailor'?
| djbebs wrote:
| Maybe put it back? As a non-nativer speaker when I read
| cobblers the first thing I think of cobbled roads and the
| people who make/maintain them.
|
| With the Shoe Cobblers it makes it clear it's talking about
| shoe manufacturers.
| biggieshellz wrote:
| Also, cobblers _can_ repair modern hiking boots with cemented
| (not welted) construction. https://www.davepagecobbler.com/
| resoled my wife's Asolo boots, replacing an EVA midsole that
| had crumbled, for well under the cost of a new pair.
| pvarangot wrote:
| I got a pair of Asolos with cemented EVA midsoles repaired in
| Bariloche too, at the place where I bought them. The trick is
| finding an adhesive that won't react with the
| plastics/leather and that's strong enough. The shop told me
| that the cobbler they used got in contact with Asolo before
| doing his own tests and they helped him find the best
| adhesive he could source locally.
|
| They broke after something like 1600kms. They went for over
| 1000kms more after that and I just stopped using them because
| I didn't pack them when I moved.
|
| The repairability of shoes where aestetics don't matter as
| much is overstated. For a nice pair of dress shoes with a
| leather upper the stitch down construction lets you keep the
| creases and everything at the same place when you repair. On
| a hiking boot that doesn't matter as much.
| fmajid wrote:
| Sneakers are designed to be disposable. Repairing them seems like
| a fool's errand, at best you'd end up with a Ship of Theseus.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| My prediction for all the inner-city commercial property that's
| becoming vacant due to a post-pandemic shift to WFH, is that it
| will be reclaimed by resurgent cottage industry
| selykg wrote:
| There are some great YouTube channels that I love watching around
| repairing boots and shoes. If anyone cares:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVYlC0HmT9eZI3ZrFy_xthQ
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/BedosLeatherworksLLC
| Aloha wrote:
| "The next generation of cobblers isn't just repairing boots" is a
| better title.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| The problem is see with repairing sneakers is that the quality of
| the sneakers vs long lasting shoes is very different. When it
| comes to sneakers I extend their life a bit with shoe goo when a
| certain part of the sole (outer heel for me) wears out too fast
| but the rest of the shoe is still in good condition. My horrible
| pattern of walking wears out sneakers's heels in about 2-3 months
| and shoe goo extends their life a bit more beyond that, but after
| less than a year most sneakers turn mushy, stinky, and generally
| unpleasant so I wouldn't want to fix them beyond that point.
|
| When it comes to classic shoes, I'm wearing a pair of shoes that
| I've had for 6 years. They are still in great shape though I
| still have to take them to a cobbler once a year for a heel
| replacement. They still have plenty of life in them so a 10-15
| yearly update is well worth it.
| handrous wrote:
| Do really, really nice sneakers last a lot longer than the
| $40-60 pairs I'd wear, back when I wore sneakers a lot? Even
| with fairly careful wear, mine would look so shitty I wouldn't
| want to re-sole them, by _at most_ a year, and often by the 6
| month mark they 'd be looking iffy. I can't imagine a pair
| surviving with the body of the shoe still in good-enough shape
| that they'd be worth re-soling by the time the sole was worn
| enough to warrant that (some shoe goo to extend lifetime of a
| well-worn pair, on the other hand, makes sense).
|
| Are people doing this with Danners or something? Rancourt &
| Company court shoes? Or do $xxx+ Nikes really hold up _that_
| well?
| onemoresoop wrote:
| I have no idea but to me a pair of Converse should last more
| than 3 months and that's why I shoe goo mine to last 6
| months. But I know people whose shoes age much better than
| mine, it's probably got to do with our walking pattern.
| nicoburns wrote:
| 3-6 months seems incredibly short. My shoes typically last
| at least a year, and I don't buy special fancy ones.
| handrous wrote:
| It may depend on the material. My recollection is that,
| when my usual shoe was a canvas low-top, I'd get _maybe_
| six months out of them before I _probably shouldn 't_
| have still been wearing them in public (but then I'd
| stretch another 3-6 months out of them, sometimes with
| full-on holes, separating soles, or torn seams by the end
| --and I _am not_ especially hard on my shoes, but then
| again I only ever bought cheap sneakers)
| 65 wrote:
| It depends on the shoe. Nike shoes have surprisingly low
| quality materials and their higher end shoes will not last as
| long as high quality shoe makers like New Balance or Adidas.
|
| The high end fashion shoes will last a lot longer. I used to
| own a few pairs of Y-3 sneakers and they were extremely high
| quality.
|
| It also depends on the materials. A knit running shoe like an
| Adidas Ultra Boost is $180, but those are going to last a few
| months to a year with daily use. A $60 pair of Saucony Jazz
| Originals will last longer (based on my own experience) than
| the Ultra Boost because the rubber outsole is thicker, and
| there's a nice taper to prevent heel drag. Saucony Jazz's
| also have a thicker upper material. The upper is maybe not as
| soft/comfortable as Ultra Boosts, but thicker nonetheless.
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