By David A. Fields
In the late 1970s, Princeton, N.J. oozed upper crustiness; a sleepy college town that perched like a yacht's captain above the sea of surrounding, middle class communities. Residents represented a comfortable mix of the cream of the crop: bow-tied, brainiac professors at the university, quirky savants at the Institute for Advanced Study (where Albert Einstein did his work) and blue-suited Wall Streeters who commuted to Manhattan while captaining industry.
In the midst of such self-regard a men's dress shoe store could thrive, as was the case with Brophy's Shoes, established in 1896 and still puttering along at the tail end of a decade that boasted disco and silk-screened shirts. The lessons learned from peering in Brophy's front window apply far beyond the cultured confines of a privileged hamlet.
