Shoeshiners buff rueful reflection of DIFC's shortage of choice gossip

I do feel sorry for the shoeshine boys in the Dubai International Financial Centre these days.

Most of the year, as I can see from Caribou Coffee in the central concourse, they are a blur of activity, with a constant stream of customers hopping up into the elevated armchairs with the steel footrests.

The typical punter is, literally, a well-heeled investment banker type for whom a few thousand dirhams on a pair of office shoes is commonplace. The shoeshine team must be experts on the finest in men's footwear.

But during the Holy Month of Ramadan, when business of all kinds slows to a snail's pace in DIFC, they look just a little underemployed.

I watched them the other day over the shoulder of my coffee guest. In the absence of the usual business flow, they just joked and laughed with each other and occasionally tried to entice the odd passing customer but with no luck. After 30 minutes of this, I decided I had to do something about it.

I've always had the feeling there's something vaguely distasteful about the shoeshine business. Another human grovelling at your feet, performing a function that anybody should be able to manage for themselves in a few seconds in the morning; it smacks just a little too much of the master-slave relationship.

But once my guest had left, I overcame these reservations as I climbed into the chair and asked Juan for the basic shine at Dhs25 (US$6). I could have gone for the premium (Dh40) or the deluxe (Dh45), but both sounded as though they'd take all day and would be more appropriate for the Talise spa, with emulsions, nutrient washes, waxing and all.

To Juan's trained eye, my footwear obviously gave the game away. "Do you work for a bank, sir?" he asked, in a sceptical kind of way.

"No, for a newspaper," I said, and he gave a little knowing nod, as though he'd already read that in the tired, black Marks & Spencer slip-ons.

"Which newspaper, sir?"

"The National, do you know it?" I asked.

His face lit up, "Yes sir, we have it here," and then he instantly looked as though he regretted saying it.

On the little table between the two armchairs, there was indeed a copy of this august organ, opened at a double page spread from the business section.

But laid out on top of it were tins of polish, brushes, sprays, bits of cloth and all the other accoutrements of the shoeshine trade. Juan got on with the job. In my elevated throne (which I was beginning to find quite agreeable), I remembered stories from the great Wall Street crash of 1929, when one of the signs of impending doom on the markets was that shoeshine guys would start whispering "sell" recommendations. They were better informed than most professional investors, the legend has it.

"Do you ever hear interesting information in the course of your job, Juan?" I asked. "About stocks and shares and financial things?"

He looked at me as though I'd just uttered a sentence in medieval Latin. He didn't know what I was talking about.

Maybe that's the real problem with DIFC, apart from the lack of volumes and liquidity and the dearth of IPOs and corporate activity (Emaar sukuk apart).

There's no casual flow of information. In New York, the shoeshine boys are traders - they know the big players, literally from the bottom up, and can move markets.

In Dubai, they shine shoes. Very well though, I must concede. The M&S slip-ons now look like Church's.

fkane@thenational.ae