Old-fashioned shoe shop in step with Internet

It's a Richmond tradition: shoe repair, bail bonds and -- now -- Twitter.

Even a nearly century-old shoe shop and bail bond company needs a Twitter feed and a Web site.

Even if the owner doesn't know how to log on to a PC.

"I don't own a computer and I've never cut a computer on," said Nathan "Natie" Elkin, the proprietor of Connie's Shoe Repair and AA Bonding at 110 N. Eighth St. in downtown Richmond.

But now customers -- and maybe criminals -- can find the little shop with the big heart and funky memories at ConniesShoeRepair.com.

"We're kind of trying to bring Connie's to a younger generation of downtown Richmond," said Bill Bergman, president and CEO of the Berman Group advertising agency, which developed Connie's Web site and vaulted the shoe store into the tweeting world.

"He's helping to bring me up to the 21st century," the 63-year-old Elkin said.

Bergman joined more than two dozen customers and friends for a celebratory glass of wine, a bottle of beer, a morsel of cheese or a shoe shine at the shop last night to mark Connie's cyber launch.

While he noshed, Bergman got his insole fixed. "The goal was to show the life this place has, the history," explained Chip Stevens, the 23-year-old Web designer from Berman Group who developed Connie's site, complete with homage to its blinking neon shoe sign.

Elkin's grandfather founded the business in 1911 and his father "was an old-time bail bondsman," said attorney Murray Janus, who is something of a Richmond institution himself.

"That's the bail bondsman I still call," said Janus, who stopped by the evening's gathering, "and I still get my shoes shined on the way to court."

Samira Davis, a bank customer service representative, brought in a bag of shoes for Connie's care. She learned about the shop the old-fashioned way: "My parents came here years ago."

But the reach of the Internet is working its speed-of-light magic.

Mike Pearson, general manager of AA Bonding, dressed in baleful black, had his first call Tuesday from a customer who learned of the bail service from the Web.

And 145 people were following Connie's on Twitter last night.

"I need to get somebody to check it for me," Elkin said.

Contact Peter Bacqué at (804) 649-6813 or .