We just helped stage a Fox Sports inter­view here at the Crocker Gal­le­ria, and man­aged to be shoe-shine mod­els in the process.

Fox wanted a “man in the street” inter­view for the upcom­ing NFC cham­pi­onship between the San Fran­cisco 49ers & Atlanta Fal­cons. They called up A-Shine & Co., which runs the shoe shine stand here at the Crocker Gal­le­ria. A-Shine is more than just a shoeshine com­pany: theirs is a story of joy & suc­cess in the after­math of per­sonal dif­fi­culty.

Dray Ready for Interview

The com­pany was founded by Kevin Tuohy right before the first dot­com boom. They brought style & fun to shoe shin­ing, so became fix­tures at posh events around town. Kevin & Co. have grown the com­pany since then. A Shine now has loca­tions around San Fran­cisco, as well as New York City.

Dray is one of the ace A Shine guys here in the Crocker Gal­le­ria, and has a Nin­ers tat­too on his arm.

So when Fox called Kevin to see if one of his cowork­ers might be a big Nin­ers fan, he imme­di­ately thought of Dray. Truth is, I ran into Dray in the Euphemism yes­ter­day, where he told me about the sched­uled inter­view today. He was under­stand­ably ner­vous. So I reminded him Fox wanted the real Dray, just like he is. Dray is an expe­ri­enced musi­cian & per­former, but this was some­thing new.

And of course we know how pas­sion­ate he is about San Fran­cisco sports.

Quick We Need Lights!

A few min­utes before the inter­view, Dray real­ized he needed a shoe model. He called us, and asked if we were wear­ing shine­able shoes. Yes! Both Justin & I are. So we came down and waited for Fox Sports.

These guys were chas­ing all over town, to cap­ture the excite­ment & enthu­si­asm for the upcom­ing game. So they were dis­ap­pointed to see how dark it was in the shoeshine zone. In fact, I got the sense they weren’t going to do the inter­view at all.

So my Memento Press cowork­ers ran upstairs, and brought our stu­dio lights down. Just as Fox was apol­o­giz­ing, and start­ing to leave, Justin flipped the switch. Voila! Dray was bathed in gor­geous stu­dio light!

Kiss­ing Nin­ers Tattoo

Dray gave a great inter­view. Justin & I got a free shine out of the deal. We may even be vis­i­ble in the back­ground, if they use the piece. Sheryl & Kath­eryn hung out and took pho­tos of the whole thing.

Then some­thing really cool happened.

Two years ago, when the San Fran­cisco Giants won the World Series, they held a vic­tory parade near the Crocker. Dray had the gump­tion to find the stag­ing area for the parade.

The play­ers were just hang­ing out, enjoy­ing morn­ing bev­er­ages, with­out many fans around. Dray walked up and asked if they would sign his San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle front page, announc­ing the event. And they did! So he has sig­na­tures from all the big names, on a sin­gle piece of paper.

Spe­cial Gift — Auto­graphed SF Giants Newspaper

He brought that news­pa­per to us, and asked us to frame it. We did. But he couldn’t pay for it just then. We set up a pay­ment plan. But as of today, there was still a long way to go.

So we fig­ured this was the per­fect moment. We car­ried his frame down­stairs, and walked up with the excuse of col­lect­ing our last stu­dio light. Then Dray heard, “By the way, a fat guy in a red suit told me to give you this.”

Well, his reac­tion was psy­chic pay-day for all of us at Memento.

Psy­chic Pay­day for Memento

He was truly speech­less, hold­ing back  intense emo­tion. Not sure how I kept from crack­ing — I’m the Sap in Chief among the sen­ti­men­tal saps around here. It was a great moment for everyone.

And with that good Karma, we all agreed Atlanta doesn’t stand a chance!

Spe­cial Gift — Spe­cial Moment

Sheryl Gets some Love