SCRAP OF SHOP/Shoe, Shave and Key Stalls
ALLY REEVES
ally reeves. copy-left. site source if used.2010
Mumbai, India is home to around 200,000 plus street vendors, many of whom are unlicensed. Operating outside of the formal economy, these businessmen construct irregularly styled stalls around the city in areas of high pedestrian traffic. The operators of these structures are often migrants, and socially hail from the lower classes and the material sensibilities they incorporate follow a “use what you have” mentality. The kiosk’s forms follows function.
While many variations of handmade stalls exist, the most petite in scale and exceptional in simplicity may be those devoted to the Shoe, the Shave and the Key. In these small and shoddy stalls a single service or good is peddled. All truths in these 5’x5’spaces bend towards a lone cause. Like some mythologically candid collection of intentions, the activities of these shops and those who run them take place in an enclosing box that when viewed romantically, can be appreciated as a bijou stage whose episodes are starkly straightforward, uncomplicated by velvet curtains or gilded decoration.
A regular passerby may slowly witness the life of a tradesman, by stringing together a few scenes of this homely performance at a time. One may wonder if such singular modes of work invade all of such a laborer’s reasoning:
Does the Key-maker think of the world through analogies related to locks, doors, and means of access?
Does the Cobbler re-sole and shine shoes with an eye for reading laces and leather like lines in a palm?
ally reeves. copy-left. site source if used.2010
Keepers of these shops appear at somewhat regular hours, setting up as early as dawn when temperatures are pleasant and generally closing up at dusk, as all seem absent of electrical outlets or furnishings of light.
Perhaps most curious is the dichotomy of cherished and careless construction that typifies these structures. While they are hand lettered, securely strapped to a tree over night, or locked with fist-sized pad locks, the materials they are made of, often seem no more than piled on or tacked together. They are composed of branches, odd planks, rusted metal cabinets and draped in plastic tarps tied on with small nails or twine. The Shoe, Shave and Key shops raise more questions than they answer: are these places dear to their owners or a scorned area of toil and repetition?
Empty, these structures serve as a light biographical account of the activities of their keepers. In some cases, a pedestrian may wonder by to find tools left out, someone having just left the scene and wandered off for a moment or so. Like stage props awkward without their enlivening actors, the stalls themselves take on the role of a character, some dingy and clumsy, others decorated in lime, chili and marigolds in the superstitious act of warding off evil spirits.
In an empty barber’s shop a worn stool sits waiting. Shaving lather and a small bowl of water rest on the nearby ledge in a wall. There is no bell to call the shopkeeper, and no queue for a shave. The owner is somewhere nearby, eating or smoking, and tends to appear if someone lingers in the shop space for more than a few moments. A small mirror is propped next to the shaving brush and cream, reflecting sky and trees overhead.
While the pedestrian may enjoy the functionality and curio nature the Shoe, Shave and Key shops provide, he or she would be naïve to believe they are not also theatre in return. These shops, like television boxes of activity turned on and off with the day’s light, also provide their occupants with plebian box seating— an unpretentious roost by which to view the cinema of the street.
ally reeves. copy-left. site source if used.2010
