Working in Clark County: Vitaliy Gerasimov, owner and cobbler at Totem Shoe Repair

No shirt, no shoes, no service?

You should always wear a shirt, but barefooted or socks-only patrons are somewhat common at Totem Shoe Repair, according to its owner.

At just before 2 p.m. on a Wednesday, Olivia Gac, of Battle Ground, waited patiently in her black socks while four pairs of her shoes were being taken care of by the business’s owner and only employee, Vitaliy Gerasimov.

One pair was getting new soles, others were getting cleaned. Gac has had her shoes repaired at Totem over the 15 years she’s lived in Clark County. Gerasimov, however, only bought the business in 2012. The physical space, somewhat hidden in a strip mall, is rented.

“I knew the other owner. You have maybe been here two years?” she asked.

“That’s what everybody thinks,” Gerasimov replied. “I’ve been here eight years.”

Gac waited for her shoes — one pair were Clarks, a higher-end brand — the others she couldn’t remember. Most Clarks cost more than $100.

“I don’t remember brands anymore,” she said. But Gac knows they’re high quality. “I buy good shoes. If you buy cheap shoes, you have to change them after you wear them a couple months.”

Dying business?

Not many people now hold the view Gac does about taking good care of more costly shoes. Fast fashion — think of those $20 boots at places like Forever 21 — is more affordable and convenient.

While those boots are affordable, oftentimes they are discarded after only a few months. They’re sent to the landfill, or maybe to a thrift store if they’re not totally worn.

According to the Shoe Service Institute of America’s website, shoe repair is “among the oldest forms of recycling.” And, while employment of cobblers has nose-dived over the last century, the industry still “keeps some 62 million pairs of shoes out of landfills and on consumers’ feet.”

Jim McFarland, Florida-based cobbler and spokesperson for the institute, said there are 5,000 “give or take 50” shoe repair shops left.

However, at Totem Shoe Repair, any notion of a dying industry would appear untrue. Almost every single crevice of the tiny shop is filled with either a shoe or a shoe product.

Gerasimov is very nearly literally buried in shoes. That day alone, he had between roughly 20 and 30 pairs that still needed to be fixed, while another 20 were awaiting pickup. Since he is the only employee, he works long hours and often must stop in the middle of a project to help a customer. He’s notified by a bell on the door.

In the span of an hour, he had to tell a few customers their items weren’t ready.

“I have a lot all the time, people,” he told one customer. “Maybe one hour? I’m very sorry.”

Family of cobblers

Despite having lived in the United States for a little more than 20 years, Gerasimov, 30, speaks somewhat broken English and has retained an accent. He is a native of Dniprodzerzhynsk, Ukraine, where his father and grandfather also were cobblers. He comes from a very tight-knit, religious family. In the 1990s, he said, “a lot of Russians and Ukrainians started immigrating. A lot of relatives. Almost a whole church started moving to the U.S. So, we did, too.”

(Shoe repair still runs in the family. His uncle, he said, owns one of the few other shoe repair shops in Clark County: Cascade Shoe Repair.)

Gerasimov, who works hard at his trade, is still adamant about taking off Saturdays for church, where he participates in choir and other activities.

“I’m always closed on Saturdays and a lot of people don’t like that because I go to church. I say sorry. It’s my Sabbath day. Monday through Friday is enough for me,” Gerasimov said.

“My wife, every day at 5 o’clock she calls me, ‘What time you coming?’ I’m like ‘I wish I could come home right now. I’m super busy too,’ ” he said. He has three children and a fourth is on the way. And it’s hard to find help.

“I do have a helper but I haven’t seen him for a month,” said Gerasimov, who enjoys photography as a hobby but has little time for it.

And while business is busy, it still doesn’t bring in enough money to take the family to see his father, a retired cobbler who lives in Missouri.

“Sometimes I can be a little tight. Sometimes I have to say I’m not taking off anything. I can’t take off no days because we have to buy something,” he said, emphasizing the cost of plane tickets for the whole family.

No socks

Gerasimov has a small workspace behind the scratched, wood-paneled front counter and shelves of shoes. He says the counter is original to the shop, which makes it more than 50 years old. He has a shoe press machine that he estimates could be 40 years old.

He’ll try to repair just about anything made of leather — not just shoes. Belts, old baseball gloves, you name it, he’s probably had a crack at it.

And the odor?

The store’s aroma is more like old leather than anything else. Stinky shoes are sometimes an issue, though.

“Some of them are like, bad,” he laughed. “When people don’t wear socks.”

Stinky or not, though, people keep bringing them in.

“Usually when they break into your feet, you love them. You want to keep them. Even for 50 years. All it needs is a re-sole or new heels,” he said.