
Johnny Shoes (photo courtesy Stefano Salimbeni)
Yet, Johnny was aware of the improvements that over the years gradually turned the neighborhood where he was born from a Sicilian shoemaker (hence the nickname) and lived his entire life from a sort of ghetto for Italian immigrants — looked upon with suspicion and disgust by many — into one of the most coveted residential sections in the city of Boston. In fact this full-figured, energetic barber, with a sharpness in his humor matched only by the thickness of his Italian American accent, never let nostalgia completely take over. In another TV feature, a few years later, he let my camera peep into his private world: the basement of his house at walking distance from the barber shop, where he built miniature renderings of the “good old days,” complete with human figurines in a perfect scale. “From a health point of view,” he admited, “this place is much better today!”

Gino Colafella cutting Johnny Shoes’ hair (photo courtesy Stefano Salimbeni)

Johnny Shoes and Stefano Salimbeni (photo courtesy Stefano Salimbeni)
The last time I interviewed Johnny, on a gloriously sunny winter day in early 2014, he had just retired; he talked to me in his store through the mirror while Gino was cutting his hair. “All over the world, if you wanna know something… you gotta go to the barber,” he said. “Barbers… they know it all!” By then he was walking a little slower but his mind was as fast as ever. At that point, for a quick joke, or piece of information or advice, instead of looking through the window of the barber shop one had to walk a few steps up Hanover Street to the coffee shop at the corner. He would be sitting there, also by the window. When I asked Gino how he felt after his retirement he said: “Oh well, he didn’t move to Florida, he just moved a few yards away!”
Then, Saturday, February 20 “è finita la canzone,” the song was over for real. Johnny Shoes’ song suddenly ended, and my barber/informant/friend, moved away for good, leaving behind an entire neighborhood, an entire community, in grief. The fact I had to write this article through tears, at exactly the same time the funeral service was taking place, made it even harder, for me, to bear. Yet it was the only way to see it published on time. I guess it was my way to carry his coffin on my shoulder.