‘Final Sale’ at Popular Shoe Store
An elderly woman came down to Tribeca from 108th Street the other day to pick up some summer pumps (six pairs) from Anbar Shoes.
“This is the only place I ever buy shoes,” she told co-owner Brian Lamhut, who was on the register. As she paid, a deeply discounted pair of Juicy Couture flats caught her eye.
“I’ll have to come back next week,” she said with disappointment. “Access-A-Ride is waiting for me.”
After 33 years in Tribeca, Anbar Shoes at 60 Reade St. is closing. Ever since a big sign went up in the window last month announcing the departure (the store has no website and does not advertise), women—multiple boxes balanced in their arms—have been lining up by the dozens at the one register. Lamhut claims business has at least tripled since he announced the store would close.
“What we don’t understand,” he said with obvious frustration, “is where have they been for the last three years?”
When Anbar closes (Lamhut says he won’t leave until he sells his fall inventory of several thousand fall shoes), it will be the sixth store on Reade Street to close in the last six months—three women’s clothing stores, a children’s haircutting and toy store, and a children’s play center.
But while the lifespan of many of the other businesses was relatively brief, Anbar has been a Tribeca institution for more than three decades. And its pedigree goes back to the days when more than 60 shoe wholesalers made Reade and Duane Streets the center of the country’s shoe industry. Anbar is the last one.
Lamhut said his business was doing fine until three years ago. Then sales began to decline, and he is not sure why.
“People were just not coming in,” he said. “I do have a lot of regulars and I’m very thankful for all of them.”
One of those regulars was Lesia Bates Moss, who, like many shoppers, was reluctant to reveal the number of shoes that she had bought in the store in the last 15 years. (She admitted to hundreds.)
Moss still remembers with a smile her favorites. There was the pair with an ivory elephant heel, another that sported a half a watermelon ornament. When she got married in 2001, it was at Anbar, of course, that she found the silver sandals with rhinestones to match her rhinestone-studded gown.
“What am I going to do now?” she asked. “I’m going to cry!”
The lure of Anbar was simple: designer shoes at bargain prices.
On a recent afternoon, for example, Zandra Stitt, a longtime Tribeca resident, held in her hands a pair of elegant $419 Bettye Muller silver sandals, that she was about to buy for $76.
“All their shoes are unusual,” Stitt said. “Usually, I wear them and people say, ‘Where did you get those shoes?’”
“This store is for the working person,” said Angela Bianco, who has been shopping at Anbar for 25 years. “You can get a $200 shoe here without breaking your budget. I’m going to miss it.”
Lamhut said that when he took over the self-service store 10 years ago, theft was rampant and shoe boxes lay everywhere.
“After three months I wanted to kill myself,” Lamhut said. “It was a freakin’ free-for-all.”
But Lamhut was a man who knew shoes. (“My grandfather was a shoemaker, my two uncles and my father were in the business. My sister married in the business. One family member strayed. He went into podiatry.”) And he knew what he had to do. He had to make sure that customers took their shoeboxes with them when they tried on, and bought, their shoes.
So when Lamhut is not joking with his customers, or complaining to them, he is barking at them: “TAKE THE BOX!”
Even employees’ t-shirts shout “Take the Box” in huge letters—and the same message is posted on signs throughout the store.
Aside from the decline in business, Lamhut said he is giving up because he’s tired of haggling with customers over prices or the meaning of “final sale,” or—despite the store motto—taking the box.
His patience has clearly worn thin.
“The lady here just asked me, is that the price of the shoe?” he tells a visitor. “And she was pointing to the orange sticker which says clearly the lowest price on box.”
He continued. “I told her, ‘No, lady...when you bring it up to the cash register I charge you twice as much.’ And she says, ‘Don’t you dare get smart with me.’”
And so it goes.
A short time later, he’s back on the floor, his booming voice reminding his customers:
“Ladies, do not bring the shoes back for any reason! Everything is final sale.”
By April Koral