IN NEW YORK CITY A 71-YR.-OLD SHOESHINE IMPRESARIO was arrested recently and charged with two counts of arson for torching two shoeshine stands in Bryant Park. One stand was burned up back on March 22, then was replaced with a new stand. On April 6 the replacement stand was destroyed also.
Bryant Park Corp. photo
At first, investigators couldn’t think of a motive or find a lead in the burnings, but after checking around they uncovered a 15-year grudge that John Swain had been carrying since he had been forbidden from using the Bryant Park space to solicit his business. The Bryant Park Corp. is responsible for the sidewalk space around their property and they constructed and provided the two shoeshine stands along the wall. The BPC doesn’t charge the shiners to use the chairs or the space, but they rely on the men to police themselves when it comes to behavior and decorum.
The fire investigators arrested Swain and charged him with two misdemeanor counts of arson in the 5th degree, charges that could bring him a year in jail or a fine. They said that Swain had admitted to them that he had set both stands on fire.
The charges were denied by neither Mr. Swain nor his friend Don Ward, 44, who shares an apartment with Mr. Swain on Franklin Avenue in the Bronx and who shines shoes on Sixth Avenue and 47th Street. “John would never confess to something he didn’t do,” Mr. Ward said, adding that Mr. Swain believed the shiners at the Bryant Park stand were stealing his business and that the BPC knew about this. Mr. Ward said Mr. Swain has nursed discontents going back 15 years, when he claimed to have been excluded from a stable of shiners permitted to do business at a formalized work spot in front of Grand Central Terminal, on 42nd Street.
He has spent the past dozen years scuffling around at less profitable sites around 42nd Street, sometimes near Park Avenue, sometimes out of Francesco’s barber shop inside the terminal. But there is always a feeling of disenfranchisement from the growing organization of a once-freelance, fend-for-yourself profession.
“The frustration has been building up for a long time,” Mr. Ward said. “You’ve got to understand something: Out here, the competition is cutthroat, dog-eat-dog. If the other guy is taking your customers, he’s stealing your livelihood, and you can’t let that happen.”
Swain, for some reason, has been constantly run off the property by the other shoeshine men who used the excuse that BPC had said that Swain wasn’t permitted to work there. BPC, on the other hand, says that they never said any such thing. Dan Pisark, vice president of retail services at Bryant Park Corporation, said the slots at the Bryant Park stand were coveted spots and only vacated if a shiner died or moved on. Usually, the current shiners would nominate a replacement.
On the day after Swain was arrested, he was back out on the street looking for some scuffed shoes to repair:
New York Times photo
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