Shiny Happy People: An Old School Seattle Shoe Shine Survives

By Rachel Belle

Listen to Feature: An Old School Shoe Shine Stand Survives in Modern Times

We live in an age where most things are disposable, and people often toss out shoes with scuffs and tired souls. It’s made the idea of a professional shoe shiner seem like a blast from the past. But at Seattle’s flagship Nordstrom store, the Perkins family has been shining shoes for decades. Morgan Perkins started the business in 1974, and since then his wife, daughters, sons and daughter-in-law, Sunny Perkins, have joined him.

“I started in 1998 because I need to buy a car,” Sunny says. “I thought, you know, I’ll just do this through high school, I’ll do this through college. It worked out so well, I’m still doing it!”

I wore my old, beat-up, vintage Tony Lama cowboy boots to do the interview and got to experience my very first shoe shine. Sunny says the stand is no longer a boys club; lots of ladies come in to get their boots cleaned up.

“Oh my goodness, the tall boots! We do a ton of them! We try and make them feel as comfortable as possible. Every so often you get a woman with a skirt on. We’ve got aprons, we’ve got things to help them cover up and feel comfy.”

I learned about the shoe shine stand from my coworker Dave Pridemore, who has been indulging in a little Mad Men routine for 25 years.

“The best way to do is is to go towards the ends of the day. You start off in the Nordstrom restaurant, which has a bar in it. So the best thing is to start with a martini, then you walk across and get your shoes shined.”

The experience is similar to getting a haircut: there’s a lot of bantering and gossiping and catching up.

“It’s amazing the conversaions that come up down here,” Sunny says. “It’s a fun atmosphere, kind of like a barber shop. Sometimes this corner gets so loud, we actually get people coming over just to check it out. We just have fun.”

“Like, when the NCAA tournament is on you can go there and you can watch sports, you can talk sports, you can talk politics,” Dave says. “You can find out what’s happening right there at the Norstrom shoe shine.”

Sunny says she can tell a lot about a person based on what shoes they’re wearing.

“It’s funny, sometimes our customers think we’re psychic. Sometimes we can pinpoint exactly what they do. If you have a person who walks in wearing all black, they’ve got the black rimmed glasses, they look really nice but they’ve got white powder all over their shoes… Usually that means that they’re an architect and they’ve gone on site to make sure the project is going correctly.”

And while a shoe shine station tucked into a department store corner might seem insignificant to some, it’s a special place for those who know it.

“I’ve been working with my family since I was 17,” says Sunny. “I was just barely coming into being a woman. I really feel like I grew up down here. When I first started working here, I was quiet and scared of my own shadow and this place really helped me to come out of my shell.”

A regular shoe shine is just $2.50 and boots are $3.50. Sunny says they haven’t raised prices since 1998. The shoe shine is opened the same hours as the downtown Seattle Nordstrom on the weekdays and from 11-7p on weekends.