Moving to Denver from Evergreen after high school, Brian Tomajko fell in love with vintage clothing, especially Western wear. “I loved everything; the fit of the clothes back then, the gabardine shirts,” he says. “But it was all about the boots.”
Cowboy boots from the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s were Tomajko’s dream shoes, but they were hard to come by. Not only were shoes from that era smaller, but when he did find his size, the boots were usually rotted out on the inside. “You’d put them on, you’d get maybe two weeks, and then they’d blow out,” he recalls.
So Tomajko’s younger self would be delighted to see the shop he currently owns: Lucky Bastard Custom Boots, a storefront that opened late last year near Platte Street, packed with shelves of beautiful, handmade cowboy boots.
But it took some work to get there…