This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Business & Tech

Who's Who: John Greene, Proprietor of Kensington Cobblers

On weekdays we feature a chat with someone who lives, works or plays in El Cerrito and Kensington.

Name: John A. Greene

Occupation: Cobbler and owner of

How long have you been a cobbler? About 48-50 years.

Interested in local real estate?Subscribe to Patch's new newsletter to be the first to know about open houses, new listings and more.

Where are you from? London, England

How long ago did you come here? 1983. Is this all going to the FBI? Carry on. Do you want to know where I was trained? It was at Cordwainers College. Now it's something like the London School of Fashion. So when you go into a store and say, “Oh, Jimmy Choo and Kenneth Cole!” they all went to the school I went to. Only I went to it for five years and they went to it for nine months.

Interested in local real estate?Subscribe to Patch's new newsletter to be the first to know about open houses, new listings and more.

And what is the difference? Well, the difference is that what they're doing is just giving them fundamentals of shoes, but they're basically designers. So in the olden days, they could just draw on a napkin. In this day and age, you can buy a CAD program, so you don't have to know what the shoe is made out of.

Do you have a preference of the kind of shoes you like to work on? Fixable shoes. Successfully repaired shoes. See, I don't have a complaints department. I fix stuff so I know it works.

Do people complain? I think the biggest problem is not breaking someone's heart. People are committed to a degree. They're committed because they actually banged up the shoes and brought them in. The deal is, I've got to tactfully tell them to go away, and as they walk out I tell them not to throw their shoes away because now they've learned a lesson. It's easy to go into the store and say, “I like those gray ones over there.” That's the easy part. I see the end result. I can cure it, but no one wants to know.

How long can shoes last? That's dependent on the customer. Always has, always will. Now, what I can't undo is people's laziness. I can't undo that. And it all stems... and I'm not a sexist... but it's the guys!

Is there a difference between mending men's shoes or women's shoes? Yes, of course there is. Size, contours – all sorts of things. It's kind of more fun, the women's shoes.

Why is that? Well, the men's shoes, they're kind of classic. They're almost not going to change much. Women's shoes are changing, so if some designer comes up with a crackpot idea, [the women] come here saying, “Fix my shoe! Fix my shoe!” Well, I'm not just going putting part A to part B. Any fool can do that, and believe me, there's a lot of them out there. So what I'm doing is modify and correct it.

What, to you, is a crackpot idea for women's shoes? Well, they keep coming out with shoes that are out of balance.

What can you tell about people from their shoes? Shoes can tell your life story. I almost know what [people] are doing and how they're doing it. All I don't know is how much money they've got in their bank account and their phone number.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?