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What a heel!
An elderly shoeshine man angry about getting the boot from working at the Bryant Park shoeshine stand was arrested yesterday for torching the stand twice in two weeks, FDNY officials said.
Bronx resident John Swain, 72, confessed to the arsons, which occurred in the early hours of March 22 and April 6, and destroyed two stands, authorities said.
Swain most recently had been working at a stand at Grand Central Terminal — even as his colleagues at Bryant Park went without work for more than a week as officials held off replacing their stand at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street because the arsonist remained at large.
After he was busted by fire marshals on two counts of arson, Swain’s shoeshine kit was still on the sidewalk outside Grand Central last night.
“Whoa! I’m surprised,” said Bryant Park Corp. President Daniel Biederman when told of Swain’s arrest.
Biederman said Swain “was a key player” in an effort to establish a shoeshine stand at Grand Central.
“He was an intelligent guy, the kind of guy who you could work with,” Biederman said “He seemed like a level-headed guy.”
It’s unclear what set off the stand scorchings.
Bierderman’s security chief, Richard Dillon, said Bryant Park Corp. officials never barred Swain from working there. But Dillon added he had heard Swain “had tried to come back and he was told by those [men] who were working there that Biederman didn’t want him to.”
Dillon and Biederman said neither of them ever made such a decision, nor did they know why the shoeshine men would say otherwise.
Their corporation installed the Bryant Park stand more than a decade ago to replace a haphazard collection of shoeshine boxes and chairs.
Shoeshine men, who are allowed to use the stands for free, charge about $5 for a pair of shoes.
Dillon said that while the company keeps an eye on the stand, the men generally police themselves.
The first fire occurred at 2:30 a.m. on March 22 and was set with lighter fluid, according to cops. The blaze destroyed the stand and its three seats.
Two weeks later, on April 6 at 1:15 a.m., a two-seat replacement stand that had been brought over from Greeley Square Park was torched, again with lighter fluid.
Bryant Park Corp. plans to replace the stand with one currently in storage at Grand Central.