Isn't it interesting how certain trades become nearly as trends and consumer habits shift?

I was driving home and I passed a shoe repair shop. You don't see many of those nowadays, do you? I mean, why would I pay someone to fix a shoe when I can just buy a new pair for $30?

Does anyone actually still say; "Hey, I want to be a cobbler!" ?
Or Tailor? Or Seamstress?

IMO; one day those trades will go the way of the "milkman" or the "iceman".

Interesting thought I ponder stuff like that too alot of the time! lol

How are they making their money with what you would expect to be so few customers?

Do singers with actual talent count?

meltwithu said:

Absolutely.

My mother-in-law is a seamstress.

http://ncc2012.com/sewsuzannah/

Dr. Kevorkian's profession.

I forgot to mention that I myself am a victim of a dying profession.

In school I took technical/architectural drafting classes, whereby we learned to properly draw floorplans using technical pencils, vellum, electric erasers, T-squares and angles. I even became proficient in creating perspective drawings complete with colored pencils and watercolors.

Then I graduated, and everyone was hiring AutoCad drafters. Thankfully I learned Cad.

I haven't used a technical pencil in 7 years.

I go to a seamstress all the time! She's handy for shirts or pants that are a bit too long, or for favorite, worn ones that develop holes or rips.

Typewriter repairmen...

Album cover artists...

George Bush apologists...

I still make Moonshine Moonshine running will never die...Im just a good ole boy...never meaning no harm....

Byron said:

Where I work, we have a middle-aged, Ukranian-born typewriter repairman come in about twice a year.

He seems perfectly content, living in total oblivion. It's somehow one of the saddest thing I've ever seen. He seems so... so... obsolete. So "out there alone."

...I just want to adopt him.

What happened to milkmen?

Fauxie said:

They went sour.

PurpleJedi said:

But where would Spiderman and Firestar be without iceman?

PurpleJedi said:

I frickin' love the cobbler! Why pay $30 for new shoes when the cobbler will repair your knee high leather boots with new heels AND polish them for $20? Or put taps on the heels for $2? I walk at least 30 blocks a day, so I wear through my heels fast... The cobbler rocks!

Here's a job that's going to be obsolete: slide librarian. Kodak discontinued manufacturing slide projectors last winter so all art historians (and other academicians who use slides) have to go to digital. Doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but try to get 60 year-old crazy art history professors to transfer their rare personal slide images of obscure architecture & artwork to digital images AND learn how to use PowerPoint and you'll realize it's not an easy task.

I remember the Rag and Bone man coming when I was younger, ringing his bell as he drove up the street. And the coalman.

PurpleJedi said:

I thought this was gonna be a thread about sony's Star Wars Galaxies revamp.

It's sad really, the dying arts that people stop caring about... stop remembering...

The folks who did stop animation...

The folks who edited film ON FILM (not a computer)...

Lots of creative folks fall out of the loop behind technology... I know it hits every profession in one way or another but when what you DO is an art & that art gets lost it's sad IMO...

CalhounSq said:

I agree. It's kind of scary. It's like everything is slowly becoming obsolete. I had one of those jolting revelations - you know the kind - where you begin thinking "too big" and start wondering how the hell we all got here, if aliens do exist, and how the earth really spins - and I started thinking that eventually I'd become obsolete. Everything seems so digitized and automated now. I'm considering going to grad school for Library Science but I wonder if there's even a future in that.

Lmao

One of my aunt's friends was a habberdasher (hat maker) back in the day

Byron said:

Oooh...political!

applekisses said:

There isn;t a hat big enough for my head, baby.

applekisses said:

I'm always interested in how our language is the same and yet different

Here a hatmaker is called a milliner. A haberdasher here is someone who sells material, cotton and things used for dressmaking.

Number23 said:

That's actually not true. I'm quite insular and solemn really. I just want to become Christlike, like all righteous men.

Number23 said:

Not that I see myself as righteous. I'm just on fire.

Number23 said:

Like someone suffering eternal damnation, burning in hell?

GaryTheNoTrashCougar said:

PurpleJedi said:

Please, Manolo Blahnik is keeping the shoe repair industry alive.

CynthiasSocks said:

Do they break a lot?