Fire destroyed this much-loved shop in Lawrence. But the owner is tough as a boot

Much like folks in Austin, Texas, Lawrence residents tend to pride themselves on the eccentric nature of their middle-American college town — a red-state oasis of oddballs and lefties. Few businesses represent that spirit as purely as BKB Leather, a shoe repair shop on Elm Street in north Lawrence.

It is hidden away in a residential neighborhood on what owner Bruce Barlow, 68, calls the “Barlow Compound.” The property is home to four houses, several Barlow family members and friends, a couple of campers, lots of musical equipment, lots of art, some chickens, a blind goose, a dog named Dusty, and a three-room shack where Barlow has been solving Lawrence’s leather-related problems since about 2000.

On Aug. 7, what is believed to be an electrical fire ripped through Barlow’s shop, burning nearly everything inside to a crisp. “It wasn’t just his shop, it was his world,” said Barlow’s wife, Kris. “Everything he cherished and loved and collected was in there.”

On a recent afternoon, Barlow — white beard, well-worn ball cap, eyeglasses hanging around his neck, Shoe Repair International T-shirt — gave a quick tour of the wreckage. He seemed most upset about the loss of items customers had entrusted to him; he estimated there were 60 active jobs at the time of the fire. He pointed out a baseball glove, a custom dog collar, a New Balance sneaker whose heel he was raising for a customer with one short leg. Everything was charred and black.

“A lot of my equipment, my tools, my parts — you can’t get them anymore,” Barlow said. “People came in and I had the stuff they needed because I’ve spent 40 years collecting heels and soles and polishes and rivets, snaps, buckles, fasteners, threaded nails, clinched nails, shoestrings.”

There were more personal losses, too.

“My granddaughter’s first violin, my Dobro resonator (guitar), my friend’s art, all my dead people’s ashes,” he said. “My library got burnt to mulch. That really hurt. I loved to share my books with people. Because that’s how I learned how to do this — from books.”

His education began in the late 1980s. Back then, Barlow fixed saddles, working out of his laundry room. “Then all the vocational schools and shoe repair shops started closing down,” he said, “so I began buying up their equipment and learning how to use it. I became a cobbler.”

He set up shop in a former gas station now occupied by the Gaslight bar, just north of the Kansas River, then moved BKB Leather’s operations across the street to an old freight depot. In 2000, he settled at the compound.

“North Lawrence sort of has its own set of rules,” said Bruce and Kris’ daughter Zoe Barlow, who lives in one of the houses on the compound. “Occasionally people get grumpy about customers coming and going, but the city has been lovely.”

By then, Barlow had earned a reputation around Lawrence as a guy who could handle just about any leather issue. Shoes, luggage, purses, upholstery, boat covers. Corporations sometimes sought him out for their research and development aims. He made prototypes for a basketball with a removable skin, and sandals with interchangeable heel heights. “Bruce doesn’t know how to say no,” Kris said. “He’ll try everything, and he always figures it out.”

Barlow is a member of a dying tribe, one of fewer than 4,000 cobblers left in the country, down from 15,000 in 1997 and 70,000 after World War II, according to the Shoe Service Institute of America. But he isn’t stuck in his old ways. He and Sarah Wallace, who lives part time in a camper on the property and has her own leathercraft business, Austin to Phoenix, share a 3D printer, which they put to use for various fixes, like custom insoles.

“One reason the cobbler shops started closing in the ‘90s is that our adhesives and fastening systems didn’t keep up with the new materials manufacturers were using to make shoes,” Barlow said. “It took 10 years for that technology to catch up. In the old days, it was all leather and wood. Glue it, nail it down, press it, give it back to the customer. Now, your tennis shoes are polyurethane and a lot of dress shoes are thermal rubber, and they all require special primers, special hardeners. So, you have to keep up with it all.”

“And it’s a planned obsolescence thing, too, the way a lot of companies make shoes today,” Wallace added. “The shoes have a shelf life. They want you to buy a new pair, not fix your old ones.”

But people will always be, as Barlow put it, “sentimental about their stuff.” BKB Leather regularly does $100 worth of work on items worth $10 or $20. “We go out of our way to dye things, paint things to match up — try to make something look as original as possible.”

The shop will live on, Barlow said. While they wrestle with the insurance company over the fire payout, Barlow will move his operation into the third room of his workspace, which wasn’t damaged. They’ll rebuild based on what they can afford. A customer unaware of the fire stopped by last week to drop off a torn leather belt with flowers embroidered on it. Barlow took the job. “I sweet-talked her into leaving it,” he said, returning from the curb, belt in hand.

The good news, Barlow said, is that cobblers nationwide have been offering to give him equipment to replace what burned in the fire.

“There’s not a lot of us left — there’s more equipment than there are cobblers these days,” he said. “So, soon I’ll get a truck and go drive across the country and pick some of that stuff up.”

A friend has set up a GoFundMe for the shop, and other customers have brought gifts. Barlow’s a bluegrass musician, and just about all his instruments were torched in the fire. “I’ve been given two banjos, two ukuleles and two guitars so far,” he said. “People are good.”

“Same thing happened to me when my guitar got stolen,” said Linda Clark, an artist and musician who’d stopped by to check in on the Barlow clan. “I had three guitars within 24 hours. That’s just how this town is.”