Inner Sunset Artisan Leather Goods Shop: An 1890 Bench

Sunset Shoe Repair at 621 Irving Street first opened in 1890 as a combined barbershop and shoe repair counter, and it is the most interesting artisan leather goods shop stop in the Inner Sunset because it does two jobs at once. The front half of the business keeps boots, bags and luggage in service. The other half turns out handmade leather bags, wallets and small accessories. The N Judah streetcar stops a short walk west at 9th Avenue and Irving.

The shop has changed hands only a handful of times in well over a century. Tony Kamely, a Lebanese immigrant who trained as a shoe designer, bought the business in 2009 and became its fifth owner. A 2019 profile in the neighborhood paper described it as the oldest shoe repair shop in San Francisco and noted that customers travel in from as far as the East Bay. That reach says a lot about a counter on a quiet residential stretch of Irving.

What makes the place relevant to someone searching for handmade leather is that the owner is a designer as well as a repairer. The same hands that rebuild a collapsed heel also cut and stitch new pieces. Repair work teaches a maker exactly where leather goods fail, from strap anchors that tear out to corners that wear through, and that knowledge tends to show up in the things they build.

Treat the first visit as a consultation. Bring the bag or boots you already own and love, even if they are tired. Showing the owner how you actually carry things is the fastest way to explain what you want in a new piece. A worn strap, a stretched pocket or a corner rubbed through by a bike pannier tells a cobbler more about your habits than any description you could give.

If you want something made from scratch, keep the request simple the first time. A wallet, a card holder or a key fob is a good test of whether you like the maker's style before you commit to a full bag. Ask what leather they plan to use and how it will age. Fine Italian leathers look rich on day one, but each one darkens, softens and scuffs in its own way.

An honest tip: skip the urge to ask for a long list of changes to a design you have only just seen. A short, clear request gets a better result than a dozen small tweaks, and it respects the time of a one-person shop that also has a queue of repairs waiting on the shelf behind the counter.

One of the most useful things you can do here is ask whether an old item is worth saving. Full-grain leather with a sound surface is almost always worth a new sole, new edge dye or a restitched seam. Bonded leather, the kind made from scraps pressed together with a plastic coating, usually is not, because the surface peels away no matter what you do to the stitching underneath.

Listen for that kind of judgment. A good repairer will sometimes tell you not to spend money on a piece, and that honesty is the best sign that you can trust their opinion on a new commission. If the answer is that your old bag is beyond saving, take note of what failed first. That is the weak point to talk about when you order its replacement.

The Inner Sunset is built for an easy afternoon on foot. From the shop, walk north up 9th Avenue to the park entrance at Lincoln Way. Within a few minutes you reach the San Francisco Botanical Garden, the California Academy of Sciences and the de Young museum, all clustered around the Music Concourse. The tower of the de Young has a free observation level with views across the park and the western neighborhoods.

Head back to Irving afterward for the long row of small restaurants and bakeries between 5th and 10th Avenues. On foggy days, which in this neighborhood means most summer afternoons, the cafés on Irving fill with people sheltering from the wind. That is a good moment to take a new wallet out of its paper and look at the stitching properly under the light.

The people who come through an old cobbler's door are a mix of long-time Sunset residents with a favorite pair of boots, UCSF staff from the campus up the hill on Parnassus who need a bag strap fixed before the work week, and visitors who saw the window on the way to the park. Repair customers often wait patiently while the owner finishes another job, so arrive with time to spare rather than squeezing in a stop.

Weekday mornings tend to be the quietest. Saturdays bring more drop-offs, which means less time for a long talk about a custom piece. If the counter is busy, leave your old item for a repair quote and come back later to talk about something new.

Leave a phone number with any repair you drop off so the shop can reach you when it is done. And if you are commissioning something, take a photo of the leather sample you choose before you leave. Hides vary from batch to batch, and a photo makes it easy to be sure everyone is talking about the same color and finish when you come back to collect.

Karpo APP can help you shape the day around the shop: ask it to plan a walk from 9th and Irving through the Botanical Garden and the Music Concourse, and save the shop and the park stops in one list. It does not book repairs, quote prices or check what is in the window. Those conversations happen across the counter, the way they have on this block for more than a century.

The shop is at 621 Irving Street in the Inner Sunset. The N Judah streetcar stops at 9th Avenue and Irving, and several bus lines cross Irving within a few blocks. Bring the item you want repaired or copied, a short written note of what you need, and a jacket for the fog that rolls in from Ocean Beach on most afternoons.