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Shoeshine boys are thick in Quito, Ecuador. Small armies of them do big business in the plazas, parks and squares in the colonial section of the city. Ecuadorians have an antiquated thing for proper shoe care and maintenance and I watched many a local's shoes shined with ample care as youngsters wielding brushes, rags and polish sat on their tiny stools and flailed their arms at the dirt and grime of the street. Their customer was typically (nearly always) a local who nearly always had their head buried in a newspaper on a park bench as the shoe shine boys wailed at the grime and honed their craft for spare change. I enjoyed watching them but rarely got caught leveling my camera at one because a good alternative source of income for the scoundrels among them was to convince tourists (who rarely wanted a shine) to "Please snap my picture," whence they'd begin shaking them down for payment in kind after the snapshot was made. But the shoeshine boy in the above street photo working Plaza de San Francisco in old Quito never saw me, so intent was his desire to either idolize 15 heroes or get access to their 30 shoes. And he probably didn't even notice the seven policemen who couldn't take their eyes off of me as I joined the brave lad and invaded their security zone to capture this accidentally posed moment, a deliciously Rockwellian one at that -- Quito style...
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