Joe has mended the slippers of The Lion King and, on a recent afternoon, I watched him help the Drama Queen.

She works upstairs in the tower. She came to see Joe on her coffee break. She made a show of plunking a stylish high-heeled boot on his counter. Joe was up to his elbows in old brogues, leather scraps, bottles of inks and dyes, and machines for cutting, grinding and polishing. He had just sewn a sole to a businessman's well-worn leather moccasin.

PHOTOGALLERY: JOE SHOE

He looked at her. She rolled her eyes to the heavens. "Boo-hoo. Please, can you help?" She nudged the boot towards him. "Can you help me? I have faith in you. Boo-hoo."

Joe the Shoe took a look.

The heel was moulded plastic; it had snapped as she was on her way to work. Bad news – plastic isn't leather. She pleaded with him once again, and pointed to her tiny feet. She was wearing the flats she keeps under her desk. "I can't go home in these."

There's a dance Joe does at a time like this. He can't tell a girl she's bought cheap boots; he just smiles and says he'll do what he can. She goes away happy. Joe frowns at the boot.

So how do you mend broken plastic?

"I'll try to bond it together."

It's clear he doesn't think much of most shoes, which tend to be little more than a lick of glue and a swatch of what he calls 'pleather' – plastic made to look like leather.

Still, he's got to make a living; his son is thinking about law school, which means Joe sells insoles, laces, heel cushions, tins of wax and saddle soap, shoe trees, toe rubbers; and, of course, it means he mends plastic heels. He begins by stripping the insole and examining the heel. "Aha – three of the ring nails, broken. No wonder it snapped. She bought the boot like this. There's no quality any more." Joe has 17 pairs of boots and 15 pairs of shoes at home; no plastic in his closet.

He sets the heel aside, cleans the break, takes a brush from a crusty glue pot and cements the heel back in place. "This is a dying trade. Nobody wants to work with their hands. As the old-timers get out of the business, a lot of knowledge is lost because it isn't being passed on."

He drives five new nails and, unlike the manufacturer, he makes sure they go in right. For good measure, he takes a sturdy screw and drives it in deep. Then he picks up the boot in both hands and tries to break off the heel; he can't.

"That ought to hold, but a good shoe is always better value. A cheap shoe will wear out sooner, and it will cost you more to fix. If it can be fixed." Such wisdom comes at a price. "My wife won't go into a shoe store with me any more."

Joe sticks a numbered ticket inside the Drama Queen's boot. Before the day is done, she will have gone home happy, and Joe will have mended 30 more pairs of shoes.