Home > Gwinnett > Rick Badie / My Opinion > Archives > 2005 > November > 03 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USHeeling, saving soles is his calling
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sam Shlimak learned how to save soles in Russia.
And in Gwinnett, he has turned those skills into a bustling business. Just don’t call him a shoe repair man.
“I can draw a design on paper, trace the pattern to leather, make the heels and do the soles,” Shlimak said. “I have the skills of a shoemaker and a shoe designer. I’m not just a shoe repair person.”
Vino Wong/AJC
Russian immigrant Sam Shlimak, 47, was taught his craft by a family friend who was a showmaker when he was 14.
A burnt-like smell from sanded leather engulfs you as soon as you walk into Shoes by Sam. The shop in Lilburn doubles as a men’s clothing store. Sams sells urban and Italian-style gear, along with Bostonian, Georgio Brutini and other high-end shoes.
On Wednesday, several customers browsed through the merchandise. Some even bought something. Most, though, wanted their boots stretched, and their shoes resoled or reheeled.
“See that?” asked Bruce Person, showing Shlimak spots where the leather on his new dress shoes had separated from the sole.
“You don’t walk so perfect,” Shlimak said. “I can glue this, no problem, but the best thing is to solder it and add a protector to the thin sole.”
Sam keeps Person’s collection of shoes in mint condition. He owns 60 pairs. Expensive ones. He buys the best footwear because he’s diabetic, and it’s important that blood flows freely to his legs and toes. Shoes are more than leather and soles to Person.
Vino Wong/AJC
Kim Sy of Norcross brings in a pair of leather motorcycle pants to Sam Shlimak (left) for some alteration work at his store, Shoes by Sam.
“When you start doing business with him, it’s not difficult to come back,” Person, of Lawrenceville, said. “He’s good at what he does, has a fair price and always has a good story.”
Shlimak was part of the great exodus of Russian immigrants who fled the region in 1991 under Perestroika. Remember, Mikhail Gorbachev’s program of economic, political, and social restructuring which led to the end of the Soviet Union and the establishment of independent republics?
Shlimak resettled in El Paso, Texas, where he managed a Western Wear store for several years. He contacted compatriots in Atlanta and asked them to be on the look out for single Russian females.
Sure enough, they found someone who spoke the same language and ate the same foods. Photographs were exchanged. Shlimak paid a visit. He married after dating less than a year. Now, he and his wife have 6-year-old twins.
Shlimack would like to pass the art of shoe repair on to his kids. But he doesn’t forsee them making a career out of a craft he learned when he was 14 years old. He was taught by a family friend who happened to be a shoemaker.
“I’d like to teach people in the community what I know,” said Shlimack, 47. “But this is old-school.”
And these are disposable times. Saving soles is a dying art.
Extending the life of a favorite pair of shoes is not the specialty of the shoe repair boutiques in malls.
“I wanted the heels taken off my boots and they told me it couldn’t be done,” said Kathi Poole of Norcross, a customer of Sam’s since 2002. “Sam did it, and they are wonderful.”
I believe her. I plan to take my favorite 15-year-old burgundy Oxfords to him.
I can’t wait to get them back.
In these days of disposable everything, what do you tend to hang on to? Drop me a line.
Comments
Commenting is now closed for this entry.
By Rick Badie
November 3, 2005 09:58 AM | Link to this
Hello everybody. Comments on “gwinnett village” continue to pour in. If you haven’t had the chance, read the last posting by Michael Smith. It’s non-judgemental and non-prejudicial. Well done. Check it out. And don’t forget to read today’s column on Sam, the shoe designer. Be safe. RB.
By Gregg
November 3, 2005 12:28 PM | Link to this
Just in case anybody doesn’t understand what kind of image “village” conjures up in this area just read the front page article in today’s AJC about the goings on in our neighboring “International Village”. “Bottom of the immigrant ladder….grimy strip mall offices…”
By rusty
November 3, 2005 03:20 PM | Link to this
What is the address of Shoes by Sam? There are tow of them in the same general area. Does Sam Shlimak own both?
Thanks,
By Michael H. Smith
November 3, 2005 08:35 PM | Link to this
In reply to grimy strip mall offices: Our nation hanging on to its’ grimy past.
To bad we’ve no “boxes� to publicly display the newly arrived indentured servants, so their honorable contracting masters can get a good look. You know…. inspect the merchandise…. look over their stock of new “labor units�…. carefully examine their teeth and bone structure. Perhaps more like the French or Portuguese of old slave trade days, they really don’t care. Guess it really doesn’t matter after-all their health. If one dies, another shipment is due in tomorrow to make-up any labor shortages that may befall.
Only a gnat’s hair from again a nation divided, a South destroyed. Whose future generation of children shall we forevermore brand “RACISTS” from birth this time, my Northern brethren?
God heal this sickened nation!
By Gregg
November 4, 2005 01:55 PM | Link to this
it sure didn’t take you long to make this a “racist” thing. I’ll leave this discussion to you narrow minded folks who don’t have the vision or intellect to discuss the real issues.
By Michael H. Smith
November 4, 2005 10:08 PM | Link to this
People smuggled into this country, this community, employed through illegal labor mills, mistreated, abused, discarded like trash is very racists. It is an abomination against the human race and it sickens me to know it is happening all over this country – again. Because we are allowing businesses to get away with it, communities to harbor it and some in an unknowing way to condone it, as just willing workers who want to feed their families back home employed by willing employers defined on a fine legal line as contract labor promised a few dollars to skirt blatant slavery, this cannot relieve the moral obligations of this nation or those of Mexico and Central America.
If I’ve turned this discussion into anything I hope it has, or shall become subject to the broader minds of conscience crying out from people who have the vision and willingness to expose the real issues. Faces these facts, the poverty that exists in Mexico and Central America cannot be cured from within this country. Fulfilling the demand for cheap labor will only create a demand for far cheaper labor, until as now, grimy strip mall offices front for indentured servitude, a half step removed from slavery. Building a “village� by any other name no matter how grand the vision will not remedy these facts from producing that bottom of the immigrant ladder nor the demographics I previously referred to as the JCB Barrio.
For someone from the North to tell me – a Southern by birth – how discrimination is easily accepted in the South – like some brand burnt into our souls – and attempt by means of correlating his indigenous ancestry with those individuals of Mexico and Central America to further shame me – with Creek blood flowing in my veins – as some misguided insensitive bigot standing in the way of Gwinnett’s greater good for denouncing what I know will only conjure up more of the same past failures that led to the need of these “International Villages�; please accept my apologies for being so narrow minded as to make fronts for indentured servitude a “racist thing� and thank you for citing my need of intellect to present a better Public Relations image for this nation headed in the wrong direction.
No Gregg, I only hoped as I remain hopeful we will never become a divided nation again, a South destroyed. That is why I spoke out so forcefully and condescendingly to p****** a cocky conscience or two. So long as we allow our prosperity to depend upon, and feed on, the poverty of Mexicans and Central Americans no matter how cleverly disguised, the success of this Gwinnett Village and our nation as a whole will be diminished, because of the wrongful use of immigration deposing of people.
In these days of disposable everything, Mr. Badie, I suppose this is something I tend to hold onto.
By Bruce Person
November 8, 2005 11:15 AM | Link to this
Great story man. I appreciate you mentioning me. I hope that you writing the story and me being there will be worth at least a 10% discount off my next pair! The cruise was fantastic by the way. Thanks again, podner. Preshate it!
Bruce A. Person