There is no point resisting restaurant impresario Danny Meyer and his ever-expanding Shake Shack empire, as one small-time Brooklyn businessman is finding out. In November, it was announced with great fanfare that Meyer would be opening the first Brooklyn Shake Shack location, at the foot of the Fulton Mall in downtown Brooklyn. Borough President Marty Markowitz praised Meyer for "beefing up the Fulton Mall," and you could almost see the line of Shacknatics, as they're known, lining up already. But lost amid all the hoopla were the six businesses that had to find new homes to make room for Shake Shack. One of those merchants, Roma Shoe Repair & Shine, has now filed a lawsuit. more ›

Yesterday we reported that 71-year-old John Swain confessed to burning down the Bryant Park Corporation's shoe shine booth not once, but twice over the past month. A few hours later we reported that after being charged with two counts of arson, he was back at his shoe shining station at Grand Central! Both the NY Post and NY Times went to visit the elderly arsonist—who could be facing either a fine or jail time—and there he was, wearing a cardboard sign around his neck with black lettering that read: Shoe Shine. more ›

Earlier this morning it was reported that 71-year-old John Swain confessed to burning down the Bryant Park Corporation's shoe shine booths on both March 22nd and April 6th, which he was charged with two counts of fifth-degree arson. The BPC's Jerome Barth now tells us that Swayne never actually worked at the Bryant Park stand, "he worked only at the Grand Central Stand, which our company put in place years ago when our team ran Grand Central Partnership. We had no dealings with him whatsoever at Bryant Park." So it seems his motive wasn't a soured relationship, but rather a rivalry! (Unsubstantiated!) more ›

As we await the Bryant Park shoe shine booth to be rebuilt, the mystery around it and its predecessor's demise linger. On March 23rd we reported on the first booth being torched in the middle of the night, and just yesterday at 1:30 a.m. the replacement booth met a similar fate. Now the NY Times has given the incidents some attention, wondering along with park administrators who exactly is targeting the booth. more ›

Late last month the shoe shine booth, located on 42nd Street near 5th Avenue and owned by the Bryant Park Corporation, was torched in the middle of the night. This morning we heard rumblings that the same exact thing happened, and Jerome Barth at the BPC just confirmed with us that around 1:30 a.m. someone set fire to the replacement booth. Sigh. more ›

[UPDATE BELOW] The shoe shiner on the corner of 42nd and 5th has lost his set-up in a fire. A reader sent in this photo of the charred booth this morning, and our sources in the area tell us it's been like this for at least a day; the plaque is also missing from what's left of the booth. Officials don't have any information about a fire incident on that corner, but all signs point to an arson job executed by the sinister electric shoe shine machine industry. more ›

In a story that reads like it was ripped from the headlines 80 years ago, a Midtown shoeshiner got into a brawl with a passerby yesterday who didn't want to hear that his kicks were dirty. The fight started at the corner of 47th Street and Sixth Avenue when the passerby objected to Don Ward's offer for a $5 deep polish and punched the 43-year-old shoeshiner. "[He] took his anger out on me because of his own dirty shoes," Ward told the Post. After the fisticuffs, the pair — as is only fitting in squabbles involving shoeshiners — spat at each other until cops arrived. more ›