Luxury For The Man On The Move

Anybody that knows me knows that I don’t spend a boatload of money on clothes and shoes. Like most guys who work in an office, or who go out to visit customers, I have just the right number of suits hanging in my closet, and the appropriate number of pairs of shoes to match those suits. I like ties, but I don’t go overboard, and I haven’t yet sent away to Hong Kong for a trunk load of custom-made shirts (although I have often thought about it).  

I’m not a video game freak, and I’m not a serious sports fan. Ask anybody, I’m definitely not a fan of massage (somebody I don’t know, touching me, ewww), and I don’t go to the bar or out for wings. My lovely wife won’t let me buy a new car because she says I’m just gonna smash it up anyway. All this to say, that I don’t usually splash out on things for myself. I just don’t. I’m not proud of that, and I don’t try to be like that. It’s just not something I do.

There is one thing I do, that’s just for me, and it’s something that people don’t really think of often. In fact, it’s something that was once really popular, and now seems on the verge of going completely out of vogue. I really enjoy getting a shoe-shine.

It seems like an old-fashioned indulgence.  From before things like shoes were disposable.

When I’m at the airport with 10 minutes to spare, or when I arrive in downtown Toronto ahead of a meeting, I stop for a shoe-shine. I’m not sure what it is about the whole process that appeals to me, but it surely does. It’s 10 minutes of just sitting. You can talk to the shoe shiner, or not. You can read the paper or not. It’s 10 minutes of justifiable man-pampering, or manpering (I just made that word up, just like the people that made up the word manscaping, but that’s a blog for another day). When I’m feeling special, I splurge on new laces. They even put them in for you…while your shoes are on your feet! 

Where else, for under ten bucks can you sit down, and ten minutes later, get up and walk out with a new spring in your step. It’s like getting your car detailed. Dirt goes away, cracks and scuffs get repaired, a wash, a buff, and a new coat of wax. Right before your eyes. I’m astonished every time I sit down. Whether it’s the boys at Walters Shoe Shine at the Toronto Airport, Chico at the Montreal Airport, or the folks at Penny Loafers in the basement of the Royal York Hotel, in ten minutes these pros have you looking and feeling like a new man. Or woman, although I’ve never in my life sat beside a woman in the shoe-shine throne.

Quite possibly the only 10 minutes in my week where I feel like the King of the Castle

And a throne it is. It’s almost overwhelming. You climb the stairs to sit in the big chair, and you look down on all the people walking by. Many of them look up at you like…”Poncy flake…nothing but time to sit there and have somebody shine your shoes…” Think what you want, these people are pros, and I’m gonna do anything I can do to add lifespan to my fifty buck wingtips. And for 10 minutes I feel like a king. ‘And you, Mr. Dirty Shoes walking by, you’re banished to gate B494. Sit there and thing about those salt stains for a while. Don’t judge me.’ This is actually the conversation I have running in my head.

I do shine at home, but it never comes out just the same. I’ve got my polishes and brushes, and all the other stuff I need to do the job, but I can’t get it right. If you recall, I wrote about a pair of brown shoes that I bought back in the fall. I was wearing them the other day in Montreal, and I stopped for a five-buck shoe-shine. I sat there in awe as Chico put a shine so bright on those shoes that I could see my face in them. Without a word of a lie, shiner than when I bought them. How could you say no to that kind of little luxury.

Thanks Chico...They're Awesome.

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