Boots From Harlick & Co.
Figure skating legend Brian Boitano, who won a gold medal at the 1988 Olympics, still has the first pair of skates he got at the age of nine. Why hang on to something you outgrew an eon and a half ago? Simple. Boitano's childhood winter-sport boots aren't just any old slapped-together slabs of hide. They're Harlicks.
Generations of amazing skaters have acquired the leather footwear that anchored their blades to magically glide across the ice from Harlick & Co. Based today in the Silicon Valley community of San Carlos, between San Francisco and San Jose, Harlick's current top hand, Jason Kuhn, says that the venerable business currently produces almost as many boots for the booming dance sport of roller skating as it does for ice skating.
The Harlick & Co. story starts in 1933, when company founder Louis Harlick began making boots for ice skaters. Most accounts say that Harlick was of Russian heritage, but a 1930 newspaper ad announcing his move from one suite to another at 150 Powell Street in
