Page \2fThe Battalion/Tuesday, September 6,1988
Texas A&M University Art Exhibits Presents
ASPECTS OF BRITISH PAINTING
Detail of Edwy and Elgiva: A Scene from Saxon History
William Hamilton (1751*1801)
1550-1800
Detail of Three Views of the "Amity Hair with a
View of Dover and the White Cliffs
Robert Dodd (1784-1815)
Detail of Posthumous Portrait of Henry VIII with
Queen Mary and Will Somers the Jester
English School. 16th Century
From the Collection of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation
September 8 - October 31, 1988
Rudder Exhibit Hall
Exhibition Opening Thursday, Septembers, 1988
Lecture by Dr. Nadia Tscherny, The Frick Collection, New York City
‘‘From Kin to Kine: The British Fascination with Portraiture"
7:00 p.m. Rudder Tower Room 701
Reception to follow the lecture in Rudder Exhibit Hall.
Thursday, September 22, 1988
Lecture by Dr. David R. Anderson, Associate Professor, Department of English, TAMU
“The Moral Power of the Image for the Eighteenth Century English Collector"
7:00 p.m. Memorial Student Center Room 201
Thursday, October 13, 1988
Lecture by Dr. James M. Rosenheim, Assistant Professor, Department of History, TAMU
“The English Collector in Historical Perspective"
7:00 p.m. Memorial Student Center Room 201
Docent tours of the exhibition are available by calling 845-8501.
Start practicing
for the real world.
Using an IBM® Personal System/2® computer to help you succeed in college can also prepare you to succeed in a
career. Because chances are, after you graduate, you’ll be working on an IBM computer.
Special September Back-to-school Prices!
Regular Special
Description Discount Price Sept. Price*
PS/2® Mod. 25, mono graphics, 640K, 2-720K drives, mouse, DOS 4.0, Microsoft
(MS) Windows 2.1, MS Word V4 (Academic Version).
$1,247
$1,181
PS/2 Mod. 30, color display, 640K, 1-720K drive, 20MB hardfile, mouse, DOS 4.0,
MS Windows 2.1, MS Word V4 (Academic Version).
$2,094
$1,935
PS/2 Mod. 50Z, color display, 1MB memory, 1-1,44MB drive, 30MB hardfile, mouse,
DOS 4.0, MS Windows 2.1, MS Word V4 (Academic Version), MS Excel V2.
$3,367
$3,010
PS/2 Mod. 70, color display, 2MB memory, 1-1.44MB drive, 60MB hardfile, mouse,
DOS 4.0, MS Windows 2.1, MS Word V4 (Academic Version), MS Excel V2.
$4,984
$4,510
Proprinter II
$356
$332
MicroComputerCenter
Computer Scdes and Supplies
Mon.-Frl. 8a.m.-6p.m. Sat. 9a.m.-5p.m.
Memorial Student Center
J====§^i=, The Bigger Picture
•Prices good for orders placed through Sept. 30, 1988. Offer limited to qualified students, faculty and staff. Prices subject to change.
Microsoft (MS) is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Personal System/2, PS/2 and Proprinter are registered trademarks of IBM Corp.
Tailor mourns demise
of Old World craftsmen
DALLAS (AP) — In the back
room of The Tailor Shop, at Midway
Road and LBJ Freeway — amid the
old black-and-green sewing ma
chines and worktables strewed with
spools of colored thread, canisters of
buttons, thimbles and tomato
shaped red pincushions — A.C. Cas
tro twiddles a tailor’s chalk in his fin
gers and says, “It’s all dying.
“There were a lot of custom tailor
ing places in Dallas back then in the
’30s and ’40s,” he says. “There aren’t
many left now. In that time people
used to like to dress. Now, kids wear
blue jeans with a tuxedo coat on.”
This year Castro will retire after
60 years in the craft, selling out to
whoever will buy. He knows none of
his seven children will be among the
bidders, and he has no apprentice.
In a convenience-conscious, one-
stop shopping world, instant service
businesses are dramatically redefin
ing Old World trades, driving tradi
tional craftsmen such as Castro and
George Nikolopoulos, a cobbler, to
the haunting conclusion that their
crafts are dying.
Today, the crafts honed over life
times and painstakingly passed
down to apprentices are being
taught in two-week group classes
and practiced in high-tech chain out
lets run by a new generation of busi
ness people who say they are rejuve
nating the trade, not killing the
craftsman.
Richard Adams, vice president of
a 4-year-old international chain of
nearly 60 shoe-repair stores called
Heel Quik, says companies like his
are “bringing shoe repair into the
20th and 21st century.” And Adams
says Heel Quik, a Marietta, Ga. com
pany, is about to step into the taillor-
ing trade.
“We all have in the back of our
mind the little immigrant cobbler
from Europe coming over to the
United States with this trade that has
been passed down from generation
to generation,” Adams says. “But the
American dream came into play
here, and that dream is that my son,
my daughter should do bigger and
better things than me.
“The number of shoe-repair
shops began to dwindle. If you don’t
have someone to pass it down to,
then your family business passes into
memories. What we’re doing is giv
ing people a new chance.”
But who are those people, crafts
men like Nikolopoulos wonder.
“You can get a few people off the
street just to put on heel caps, and
then they butcher the shoes,” says
the native of Trehlos, Greece, who
runs The Cobbler shop at Preston
Royal Shopping Center. “The real
artist is dying.”
“That’s not the idea at all,” says
Tom Van Pelt, who manages the
Heel Quiks in Garland and Arling
ton. “The idea is to let people know
that the shoe repair business is not a
dying art.”
It’s just different — more mod
ern. “It’s actually better to take a vir
gin and train them in our way of re
pairing shoes, because sometimes
the traditionalist is just so set in his
ways, he doesn’t want to move the
way we recommend they move,” says
Adams.
Efficiency of movement is impor
tant in the new trade. Executives at
Heel Quik conducted time and mo
tion studies, then built their two-
week training seminars and their
shop layouts to provide maximum
efficiency.
Now that they’ve got a foothold in
the shoe trade, they’re moving into
tailoring with a new franchise called
Heel-Sew Quik shops. “We don’t go
into any great tailoring or anything
like that, but Sew Quik will be there
“The shoe-repair business
is so much competition
now. It’s not skill. They
teach them to put on a
tap, and it’s the only thing
they know. This is what’s
killing the shoe repair
(business). ”
Cobler Octavio Avila,
owner of a shoe-repair
business
the chains, in most cases.
Plus, he says, he offers persons
ized service that instant shoe-repa
stands can’t provide — like
ing and constructing metal inset®
for a World War II veteran whosB
right Western boot toe tended [
curl up, because he was missing
his foot.
to hem pants, sew on buttons,
shorten sleeves,” says Adams.
It’s just the thing that traditional
ist tailors and cobblers don’t want to
hear.
“The shoe-repair business is so
much competition now,” says cob
bler Octavio Avila, owner of a shoe-
repair business on Knox Street. “It’s
not skill. They teach them to put on
a tap, and it’s the only thing they
know. This is what’s killing the shoe
repair (business).”
Avila, 67, learned the trade while
working in his uncle’s shoe factory in
Mexico as a boy and is quick to attrib
ute the trade’s decline to the instant
shoe-repair shops. He repairs about
100 pairs of shoes each week.
Each Heel Quik repairs roughly
10 times that number and can do it
about 10 time faster, Van Pelt says.
But Nikolopoulos, who learned
the trade from his father in Greece,
says speed isn’t everything and, in
fact, is being over-emphasized. He
says he can repair shoes just as fast as
At the shop, shoes are heapedo:?
the shelves in the back workroomJ
scuffed brown wing tips, aqua sat
slingbacks, white leather thona
purple brocade pumps — waiting
repaired. Others, already sole-fe
and heel-less, hang from bentnit
in wootlen workbenches.
“I grew up in this business,"Nil(
lopoulos says. “It gives me a good lr
ing, especially in the times with tit
baid economy,” when people ait
more likely to repair the soles am
heels on old shoes than to buy no
ones. He says his shop fixes aboc
750 pairs of shoes and boots a weei
Castro, the 69-year-old tailor^h:
will retire soon, says sadly thatmos
of his work these days is just altera
tions: taking in seams and waist
hemming pant legs and skirts.
Of f-the-rack suits and the fidli
fashion industry made theoncentt
essary trade a very nearly obsele
one, and those who still stitch nt.
tend to spend their careers in
store alteration departments, Cast:: H
says. His shop turns out only out
custom-tailored suit from scratch
week. Castro remembers the year:
when he and his father tailoredeigk
suits each day.
Police: Some convicts
The
bluntly
But or
the sec
Chri
locker
A&M s
ceeded
thing 1
Pavlas
first ha
He r
carry a
three f
yards.
But
settled
son am
fluster*
fense,
Ron Sz
ist.
Osgc
| fore, tl
stances
| seen tl
! taken t
j at Kyle
But
many t:
I sissippi
No,
any po
most ct
field g
Jackie
touchd:
the two
But I
coache*
tinuity
Osgc
showin
“Off
ball as
may lead errant youth
said aft
ball ovi
couldn’
HOUSTON (AP) — Some pa
roled convicts are returning to their
neighborhoods where they become
teachers and unofficial leaders of
loosely organized groups of errant
youths, police said.
The youths have a high regard for
experienced criminals and the con
victs serve as their role models, po
lice said.
While cities like Los Angeles, Chi
cago and New York have been strug
gling with a gang problem for years,
Houston police have discounted any
rumors of organized gangs in this
city.
But that picture has changed in
recent months as police have begun
to recognize several small gangs
wandering the streets of north
Houston at night.
In December of 1987, a rash of
murders and robberies in an area
near Moody Park caught the atten
tion of police Chicano Squad offi
cers.
Officer Rico Garcia said their in
vestigation turned up a suspect who
they believed was working with seve
ral other youths.
At first, police thought the crimes
were the work of just one gang, but
further investigation uncovered sev
eral pockets of small gangs through
out the area with members ranging
from 12 years old into their late 20s.
In many cases, the youths were
being guided by ex-convicts who
were members of prison gangs, Gar
cia said.
Paroled from prison, the/ex-cons,
some still in their early 20s, return to
the neighborhoods where they grew
up and first began their criminal
lives.
But their status as prison vetent
and members of prison gangs briny
them a new recognition, Garicaac
The convict becomes the nucleus
a group of admiring youths, wheel;
he directs in criminal activity.
"They (ex-cons) are not actual
recruiting them,” Garcia said
“These kids just naturally harilj
around them, and they see the be u
as easy prey to do their dirty wori|
for them.”
The groups of youths led bymortl
experienced criminals are respons
hie for soaring crime rates in tl/p
area, Garcia said.
Houston police Officer Victc;|!:
Trevino, who has worked out oft.
Wesley Community Center in t ;
area for the past 10 years, ki
watched many of the neighbo -
hood’s children grow up, get it jj
volved with crime, serve a prisotjb
term and then return to the neigti-i
borhood and revert back to oldcriir
inal habits.
B
Wi
Tenr
The
play res
Wiml
out i
day c
the v
layec
watcl
pend
But Trevino is hesitant to use tit 1
word gangs, which implies moreotl
ganization than these groups c:|
youths have, he said.
tire t
It
then
dal o
don
hop*
thril
[s, Tr
think of gangs,” Trevino said. "Justil
very indiscreet group of individual
who do drugs together and comm
crimes, and there is an adult, amou
experienced criminal or ex-con, wk
teaches them. They’re packs, lilt
wolves, that’s what they remind mt
of.”
are
ing
has
don
But some police officials said the
are noticing that the packs of youth:
are getting more organized.
Ty
T exas A&M
Flying Club
teaching the (Best to ‘J-Cy tfie (Best
brought
hospital!
Presbyte
cials said
Dr. Ct
Interested people are urged to attend our meeting
September 6, 1988 at the Airport Clubhouse
For information
Call Julie Scott 846-1279
7:00 pan.
CLIN
Studen
FI
Lai