A Sacramento shoe shiner has gotten his first taste of Hollywood little more than a week after his story was told in The Sacramento Press. The sidewalk entrepreneur named A. Gee has been featured on local TV news and interviewed live on Good Day Sacramento. But that's not all. He also bagged his first TV show credits Friday, when he was recruited to play himself during local filming for the CBS prime time series, The Mentalist. "I'm just having fun right now," Gee said Monday, his first day of work in a new location at 816 H. St. For five years, he plied his trade in Roseville. Two months ago, he set up shop downtown at a black metal bench at I and 14th Streets. Now he shines shoes ins

He arrives at 7:30 every weekday morning in a tie and crisp dress shirt, smart trousers and that big smile. The shine on his shoes has been decades in the making. But he doesn't disappear into the upper reaches of some government building or law office. His workplace is a shaded black bench at the corner of 14th and I streets. Gee -- just Gee -- is a shoeshine man. Yet he's no ordinary shoeshine man -- if there even is such a thing. He's got far too much passion about his work and the importance of a well-shined shoe to be considered ordinary. And then there's that whole flaming shoeshine thing. Gee sets up shop where he can find a steady stream of people who take their shoes as seriou