Claremont’s curmudgeonly shoe cobbler taking steps to retire – Daily Bulletin

Soon the owner of Everett’s Shoe Shop will be walking into the sunset.

Ernie – as he asked, I call him, not a last name – has sold his shoe repair business after 39 years in Claremont. He arrived in 1982 after running a business in West Covina.

“Forty-five years since I did it. And I’m old, ”says 65-year-old Ernie dryly behind the counter in his no-frills shop. Packages of laces, polish, and wax are for sale on the walls. “It is time for me to go fishing.”

Ernie is only the fourth owner of 122 Yale Ave. Shops founded 95 years ago by Everett Liles. Many assume Ernie’s name is Everett. He doesn’t bother to correct it. Few people know his last name, and that’s how he likes it.

I know his last name but he is asking me not to use it. “I am a private citizen,” he explains. “If people want to know my last name, they can look me up in the town hall.”

The store is in a cramped store with a brick facade and a quaint sign, a 1958 Hugin cash register, and a wooden counter open to the street. Customers can interact with Ernie or his assistant Pam without having to enter – which some are reluctant to do.

Ernie has shoulder length brown hair with just a touch of gray and prefers black t-shirts, blue jeans and walking shoes. After a life of tearing shoes apart, his hands are big and his fingers as blunt as his speech. “A simple, uncomplicated guy” is how he describes himself. His version of the live-and-let-live philosophy is slightly threatening: “I let you live, you let me live. But don’t mess with me. “

Ernie is known for two things: excellent repairs and a brusque approach to customer relationships. “If you want to know what people think of me,” he says happily, “go to Yelp, go to Google.”

Everett’s received 4 stars on Yelp, with praise for the craftsmanship and shocked comments about the attitude.

“The owner is rude and grumpy … and then he’s having a GOOD day,” wrote one reviewer. One woman claimed that Ernie challenged her to a fight. One man said he would only “recommend the place to people who want to be yelled at”.

One reviewer exclaimed, “This guy skipped the decency class!”

A 5-star review sees Ernie and Pam differently: “The main complaint I see here is basically that people want them to be nice to you? They are not millennials. “

John York, a musician who was once in the Byrds, gave me a hint about Ernie’s resignation. York and his wife Sumi Foley, a longtime customer, are Ernie’s favorites and say he does a great job. But they have a sense of humor about him.

“He’s a Curmudgeon. He has so many people who are scared of him. People would stay on the sidewalk until he showed them in, ”says York. “It’s this incredible character that Claremont is about to lose. He looks like an angry Viking in his cage. “

I doubt Ernie would have spoken to me if I hadn’t dropped York’s name. At first he gave me a simple comment and thanked customers and critics alike, but I kept asking questions and he kept answering them and he let me take his picture. He says he never gave an interview to the Claremont Courier. A former reporter dropped the question but said affectionately, “You are the most misunderstood man in Claremont.”

While we were talking, Ernie remade a pair of old boots with a fresh heel and sole to match a photo a customer supplied of a look he liked.

Kind of perverted pride in the negative comments, Ernie explains that he can score as rude because he’s too busy fixing a steady stream of shoes to appeal to customers.

Pam, who also asks me not to use her last name, describes her role as a “gatekeeper” so that Ernie can concentrate. She says his practice of telling customers directly when an item isn’t worth repairing can rub them in the wrong direction, even when others appreciate his openness.

“I am very open and honest. I don’t crush words, ”says Ernie. “I smile when I want to smile.”

Moral: You don’t go all over the cobbler, the cobbler goes all over you.

Barbara Cheatley, who has run a boutique in the Village one block from Everetts since the 1970s, wonders when I tell her Ernie is letting me interview him. “He’s very independent, so that’s the best way to put it,” says Cheatley. “I like to go in and try to make him laugh. I succeeded once or twice. “

Everett’s is a holdover from a time when Claremont’s downtown village was a primary care center rather than a regional destination.

Dick Liles, 87, over the phone tells me about his father Everett Liles, who opened the store in 1926.

Elderly Liles left Chaffey High in 10th grade to learn the craft from an upland shoemaker, Hugh MacLean, who treated him like his own son. Liles got ready for his own shop and took a seat from a shoeshine boy who bought the lease for $ 10.

It’s tough business: tough on the eyes, hands, and legs. Dick worked there as a boy and part-time as an adult, including while quitting a construction job. One of his fondest memories is having lunch with his father on Saturdays for two decades, usually at the Village Grille.

“I got my eye on one of the waitresses there,” says Liles of a server named Pattie. “We got married in 1960. We celebrated our 60th birthday last year.”

Everett Liles retired in 1973. His first customer, Fred Bentley, was also his last customer almost five decades later. Liles sold the business to the only man who wanted it for $ 5,000. His son didn’t. As early as the 1970s, shoemakers went out of fashion – although Liles always said shoemaker was an outdated term.

After Liles, there were two short term owners. Then Ernie stepped into the picture.

He had taken over Lou’s shoe repair shop in West Covina in the 1970s after studying the craft in another shop at Covina High, as Everett Liles had done. What was the attraction? “I saw his life and just went with him,” explains Ernie to his mentor Vito. “He was independent and only controlled his own destiny.”

One day while having lunch in Claremont at The Danson, he was surprised to see the retired founder of Lou’s go to Everett’s shoe store via Yale. He hadn’t retired. When Lou decided to retire a second time, he sold the shop to Ernie.

In a throwaway society, most of us buy inexpensive shoes and toss or donate them when they are worn out. Ernie says most of his customers buy quality products. “You get what you pay for,” he scoffs as people bring him cheaper footwear that has fallen apart.

Most repairs are in the $ 30 to $ 70 range. He could redesign an upper where a dog has chewed it, replace a sole, or redesign a beloved item that is decades old. Besides shoes, he repairs handbags – dogs chew on them too – and other selected items.

Pam, who briefly volunteers as my assistant, asks him about the most unusual item he’s ever made. “I made this lady’s toe,” recalls Ernie.

“She had cancer and they cut off her toe,” he explains. “I made a toe and put an acrylic toenail on it so she could have a nail to paint like the rest of her toes.”

He not only repaired shoes, he also repaired a foot.

Now he has sold the shop to Victor Ojeda. I met Ojeda in the store on Thursday.

Ojeda, 35, speaks softly. He helps out in his brother’s shoe repair shop in Los Angeles. A customer told his brother that Everett’s was for sale, and Ojeda, who was going on strike himself, made a deal. The paperwork is taking longer than expected, but he plans to take over the business and lease it on April 1st while he helps out in the meantime.

I ask what he likes about shoe repairs.

“Sometimes I talk to customers. I think that’s what I like best, ”says Ojeda. “I like that best when I see their happy faces when they get their shoe and it’s repaired.”

If he can fix not only shoes but also the store’s customer relationships, dissatisfied customers can find a way to his door.

David Allen, a real heel, writes on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Email [email protected], phone 909-483-9339, visit insidesocal.com/davidallen, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook, and follow @ davidallen909 on Twitter.