‘Mayor of Park Street’ George Fabian steps down, is honored

The bad news: Park Street Shoe Repair now closed

Doug Moe by Doug Moe

Photo courtesy of Frank Alfano George Fabian, right, with his father, Tony Fabian, in front of the first incarnation of the Park Street Shoe Repair shop.

The news hook for this story was supposed to be that a group of friends, many of them former University of Wisconsin-Madison hockey players, have banded together and raised money for a UW scholarship in the name of George Fabian, proprietor of Park Street Shoe Repair at 609 S. Park St. and the unofficial Mayor of Park Street.

That’s still a story.

It started last summer, when some former Badgers, in town for a hockey championship reunion, stopped by the shoe shop to say hi to George.

Some days it seemed like much of Madison was stopping by to see Fabian, who began operating the shoe shop in 1960. It was started by his dad, Tony, in 1938, 80 years ago this year.

George’s mix of rough good humor and encyclopedic knowledge of Madison’s historic Greenbush neighborhood (near Park and Regent St) drew people to him. The shoe shop became a popular gathering spot for conversation and observing the passing scene on Park Street.

“I hope no customers show up,” I recall George saying one day. “They’ll have to wait outside.”

With time, Fabian became a local celebrity. Newspaper profiles appeared. There’s a documentary about him on YouTube.

George for years ran the penalty box at home UW hockey games. Away from the rink he sharpened skates and repaired equipment. The players loved him.

When a group of them stopped by this summer, also at the shop was Frank Alfano, the retired Dane County facilities management director and former president of the Italian Workmen’s Club, which is on Regent Street near the shoe shop.

Alfano–impressed by the players’ loyalty and affection for George–had a word with Mike Dibble, the former Badgers goalie, and the result is a UW scholarship, stewarded by the Italian Workmen’s Club, in the name of George and his late wife, Inez. Word went out to club members and hockey alumni, and Alfano said recently they’ve raised $16,000 toward a goal of $20,000. A wine and cheese fundraiser reception for the scholarship is being held at the club Jan. 28 from 2 to 6 p.m.

The scholarship is not the first time the hockey players have saluted Fabian. Two decades ago, they funded an all-expenses paid trip for George, a baseball nut, to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.

The scholarship is a nice story, but it’s not the real news hook here, which is bittersweet at best.

I wasn’t surprised to hear from Alfano that George had resisted the scholarship honor–he helped the hockey team because he liked the guys, George said–but I was surprised to learn that George fell in October and broke his leg. He hadn’t been back to the shoe shop since, Alfano said.

I called George at home last week. I should mention that George and I have been friends for more than 50 years. I grew up in Midvale Heights, one block over from George, who lived on Charles Lane.

On Sunday afternoons after Packers games, George would convene a touch football game with the neighborhood kids in the street in front of his house. George quarterbacked both sides. He called himself “the old-timer.” He was in his 30s. Like the hockey players later, we all loved him.

George is 86 now. His voice sounded strong when he answered the phone, and he seemed glad to hear from me.

“The last time I remember you getting hurt was when you tore your Achilles tendon playing football in the street,” I said. It was 50 years ago.

“That was the last time,” George said.

We chatted about this and that–he grumbled a little about the scholarship, but he’ll be there on the 28th–and then George paused and said, “I’m not going back.”

“What?”

“I’ve been wrestling with it and I’m not going back.”

He meant the Park Street Shoe Repair shop will not reopen.

It was a combination of things, George said, but the tipping point came during his absence when the cold weather caused a water pipe to break.

I didn’t know what to say.

Over the years George has told me how when he was 10 he started helping his dad in the shop. Tony Fabian came from Sicily. Their first shop was a tin shack near the present location, to which they moved in the late 1940s. George did a few other things but took over the shop in 1960, when he his dad was ill.

The late Joe “Buffo” Cerniglia, a shoe shop regular, referred to it as an “institute for advanced Italian studies.” It didn’t hurt to be Italian, but anyone with a story to tell was welcome. In warm weather the guys would sit outside on a bench in front of the store. People driving by would honk a hello.

It will take a while for me not to look at the bench or in the window when driving by on Park Street, and I know I am not alone.

One man will miss it most.

“It has been my whole life,” George Fabian, the mayor of Park Street, said.

I thanked him for the memories and said I’d see him soon.

Doug Moe is a Madison writer. Read his monthly column, Person of Interest, in Madison Magazine.

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