© 2025 Robert Sickles
Seattle’s old Pike Place Market is one of the places every tourist and resident of the Puget Sound region loves to visit. You've probably seen videos of our famous fishmongers entertaining the crowds by chucking whole salmon across the room to each other. Yeah, I don't know they do that. Busy, colorful, and offbeat, the Market is a multi-story maze of stalls and shops that literally typify Northwest interests and tastes. That’s the front-facing part of it anyway. There also has always been what I might call the underbelly, a run-down and dusty part, a dim lower level on the back street where tourist families wouldn’t choose to explore. Some sketchy people idled or slept it off there, kind of a mini version of Skid Row.
Almost like little grottos cut into a cliffside, there was a short row of shops down there on Western Avenue, below the main Market building. When we were there many years ago, one of them was closed up, another looked like a warehouse. We were hunting for a place we’d heard about where we could have quality custom orthotic inserts made for a reasonable price, and that turned out to be the one little hole-in-the-wall that was still open for business, Mobeta Shoes. Through the front window that looked like it was rarely washed, there was a faded sign reading “Custom-Made Shoes & Prosthetics” hanging over a dusty display of some very unusual footwear which were meant to impress that this was a cobbler who could fit any foot, any style. There were tooled leather red boots with extra high platform heels like Elton John might have worn if he had size 4 feet. A pair of super wide, very stubby lug-soled lace-ups puzzled me—they could have been made for someone with seriously deformed or damaged feet. Work boots that were designed to function with steel leg braces. And of course, the pair of size 24 men’s oxblood wingtips. I turned the handle on the peculiarly short and weathered door, and we ducked our heads to enter.
If you’ve read my previous story about the old bookstore I discovered when I was a kid, you might think I’m simply trying to get away with a rehash of the same story. It’s not like that —I just seem to have a thing for this kind of place! I’ll get my wife Linda, she’ll tell you, she was there getting custom shoe inserts too.
The room was dim and the ceiling strangely low in the Mobeta shop, maybe this space was not intended to be a storefront, not at least for humans of regular height. The guy with long silver hair held in a bandana and wearing a leather apron asked us to wait a second while he finished glueing and tacking something at his workbench. Around the room there were more curiosities on display—here a pair of scary-precarious stilettos, there some genuine court jester shoes. In the corner, a collection of snake skins and exotic hides, and a few eerie taxidermy critters. All around us, there was an eclectic display of native American art. This was not a store with boxes of shoes on the shelves. Nothing on display there was for sale, all of it just for conversation starters. Every customer for Mobeta was going to get completely custom footwear, made the old-fashioned way. This was the place to go if your feet, legs, or gait were way outside the norm. Or like Linda and me, if you just needed well-made inserts for walking shoes!
As the shopkeeper walked across the room toward us, he had to squeeze through a gap between an industrial sewing machine, stacks of fragrant leather, and his workbench; then he ducked every time he passed under low cement beams overhead. I smiled and asked how many times of banging his head did it take to become instinctive to duck. He didn’t respond, so I let it go with the assumption he’d heard that question 10,000 time before and didn’t need to respond to it ever again. I also asked where the name “Mobeta” came from, and his reaction was similar to my head-banging question. I wondered if it was pidgin English for “more better” but he just shook his head and went straight to business, and soon we were seated on chairs like the ones for shoeshine customers, and had our feet stuck in boxes of wet plaster, part of the mold-making process for our orthotic inserts.
His name was Walter, and as I said, was not big on welcomes and pleasantries with us, although he was very chatty with another guy who stopped in—a familiar street person, I’d say. I learned much later that Walter made it clear to anyone that he loved local people that fit his sense of urban life. However, clean and groomed suburbanites made him cross. I didn’t sense animosity from him, but I could tell he had a protective shell. It’s my hobby to disarm the cranky and joyless, so I went to work on him, trying to find his light and see if he was willing to show a sense of humor. Not easily, but I did eventually get somewhere with Walter in conversation since we needed to sit for 20 minutes while the plaster set up. He was not a joyful man, to put it kindly; I'll give him the benefit of having a bad day. But he was willing to unload some of his pet peeves, even while I praised him for so admirably preserving the old ways of the cobbling trade.
Walter told us he had been making custom shoes and prosthetic footwear for decades and would like to retire. But he felt stuck and couldn’t see an easy way out. He didn’t think anyone would be qualified or interested in buying his unique business. But even if someone was, they’d have to find a new location because, believe it or not, he believed his was to become a hot property with higher rent before long. I looked skeptically around the strange space, wondering how that could ever be.
“Shoes for people with unusual feet, with all the oddities life can produce” was a fitting, if not off-putting, motto for funky Mobeta Shoes. Walter really knew his trade well, and had lots of grateful customers, including Linda and me; we enjoyed our custom inserts for many long walks! We found Walter in a better mood the last time we saw him. He thought he may have found someone to hire on as an apprentice who could eventually take over his business. That must not have worked out as the shop was soon closed. He was right though; thirty years later, that part of old Western Avenue is alive with bright boutiques and galleries—and Mobeta Shoes is long gone.
Dang! To get custom orthotics of that quality now, I guess we need the app and a 3D printer.
Walter, I don’t know how you feel about boating—but at least metaphorically, I hope you and your first mate found a seaworthy liveaboard and are anchoring out in peaceful gunkholes.
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