Favorite Shoes
The first time I tried on what I now refer to as my "beach shoes," I fell in love.
I had been searching all over downtown San Francisco for just the right traveling clothes and shoes for the epic European adventure I had impulsively decided I would pursue. I had found a number of quick-dry, no-wrinkle skirts, tops and pants, but shoes comfortable enough to sustain two months of walking day-in and day-out seeking all the treasures that northern Europe's museums and other cultural sites had to offer was eluding me.
On a whim, I turned down a side-street and came face-to-face with a pair of shoes in a store window that beckoned me within. I tried them on and my search was over. That was five years ago.
I get inordinately attached to the shoes I love, never wanting to rid myself of such faithful companions. When finally persuaded that this is the right and inevitable conclusion to the relationship, I immediately try to recreate those exact shoes -- never with any success.
My favorite shoes from junior high school were a pair of soft-leather, ankle-high, lace-up boots with metal studs on the side in a spiral pattern. The boots themselves looked a little like boxing or wrestling shoes, so when they had finally fallen apart after years of abuse from the tough New York streets, I firmly told my mother that I only wanted a pair of boxing shoes.
Dutifully, she took me to every athletic wear store she could think of, but every one yielded the same result. As I stood there, enthusiastic and dogged, explaining to the clerks what I wanted, first they would look me up and down, a look of incredulity stealing across their faces, then they would look at my mother as if she were insane for humoring me in this fashion and finally they would inform me that boxing shoes were meant to be worn in a ring, not on the streets of New York.
I've heard now that boxing and wrestling shoes are all the rage among the ultra-hip.
My favorite shoes from high school were first ordered from a Spiegel catalog for ten dollars. Manufactured by Capezio, I later learned that they were actually designed as folk dancing slippers and, again, were not really intended for regular use. Nonetheless, when the original pair from Speigel's wore out (as little canvas slippers are wont to do when you wear them on pavement everyday), we headed for the nearest Capezio store and bought several pairs of these folk dancing slippers -- I was determined not to lose my favorite shoes ever again.
I wore these slippers all throughout high school, and even into the beginning of college. I wore them with socks, with stockings and with bare feet. I wore them on the hottest days of summer and, rather stupidly, on the coldest days of winter. I wore them in the rain, the mud, the snow (again, stupidly) and sunshine. I even wore them into the surf on rocky beaches. I hiked in them, I climbed rocks in them, I moshed in them (again, most of this rather stupidly), hell there were even times I made love in them.
I destroyed one pair in the torrential mud and rain that was the twentieth reunion of Woodstock. Nothing official was planned for that reunion, not like the twenty-fifth, which was an exercise in mass-marketing. But Yasgur's farm was vaguely in the same direction as my grandparents' house in Upstate New York where we were headed for a few days' vacation, so we decided to drop by and see what was shaking, so to speak.
Dirty tents were set up, far more than I'd expected, in front of a small stage where bands too-stoned to speak or play properly jammed until they forgot what they were doing. Little shrines had been set up around the encampment, and hippies old and young left little offerings. Caught up in the moment, I carefully removed two strands of love beads from my neck and gingerly placed them with love and prayers for peace on a stand with candles and incense burning, protected from the rain by a tarp.
A few lopsided booths stood to the side selling tie-dyes, incense, love beads and food. My dad, who had introduced me to the music of the Grateful Dead not long before this trip, bought my youngest sister a tie-dye shirt with a huge grinning sun in the middle. She wore that shirt for a large portion of the first few years of her life.
But, as with the original Woodstock, the rain became torrential and the mud unbearable. We slipped and slid our way back to the black-cherry colored, faux-wood paneled Plymouth Voyager and drove off into the night, Rolling Stones playing and my now grosser-then-gross slippers relegated to the back trunk area.
When the last pair of my favorite slippers finally had become more hole than shoe, a quick trip to Capezio informed me that that style of shoe was no longer being manufactured. Instead, ballet and gym slippers were offered to me, but I had to decline, explaining that those shoes had no soles and so would not be good for walking on pavement. The puzzled clerk wondered why on earth I would wear these specialized shoes in regular life and I left, disappointed and empty-handed.
My favorite shoes in college were probably my size three boys Doc Maartens. They were my first ever credit card purchase. Actually, that particular buying trip represented a lot of firsts. I was a sophomore in college and had taken a week off from classes just before finals and winter break in order to attend my first professional conference, held by the American Association of Anthropology (known as the Triple As) in San Francisco.
While I was there, I took the time to look up an old flame of mine. Both of us were in new relationships, but we were still friendly. I walked the short distance from the Hilton to his residential hotel on the edge of the Tenderloin and met him outside, shivering in the December winds off the Bay. He was working in a shop not far away doing retail and piercings and after pizza and a game of pool, I walked him to work. I wandered around the shop, fingering the bondage gear, eying the PVC dresses and checking out the wide assortment of boots.
I wondered aloud if I should get a pair of Docs to protect me from the rain and mud of Oregon winters. Despite having already survived one, I didn't actually have a pair of boots. My ex- sprang into retail mode and before I knew it, I was whipping out my credit card for my very first purchase -- at a discount, of course. Just as I was signing, his current girlfriend came in, sporting the black hoody, piercings and Chelsea haircut of a squatter punk. She also had a perpetually running nose and looked as if she hadn't eaten in two weeks. I looked at myself in my heels, slacks and top coat and suddenly felt very out of place. Lip rings and a guy were the only two things that she and I would ever have in common.
The Docs stood me well for six years. I suppose if I had oiled them regularly the creases in the toes wouldn't have become cracks and then gaping holes, but I had wanted Docs because they were supposed to be low-maintenance, rugged shoes. Once again, I tried to replace them. But somehow the next time I tried on a pair, I needed the size 4 boys, though they didn't fit quite right and no amount of breaking in seemed to be able to make them comfortable. The old pair had fit like a glove, so to speak.
The Docs were officially replaced on my walking tour of Ireland. Even though I had purchased my new walking shoes specifically for trekking around Europe, I had thought that boots might be better for an actual seven-day walking tour. Not having hiking boots, I brought along the ill-fitting new Docs. One day of walking and the resulting blisters was enough to convince me that the Docs were done for good. I resorted to my walking shoes and in them found a pair of best friends for my feet.
Together these serendipitous shoes, found in a store I didn't know existed in a side street in downtown San Francisco, and I traversed northern Europe: climbing marble steps of museums, racing through crowds in the London Underground, slipping on ice in St. Petersburg, skirting fountains in Vienna, wandering up the winding paths of Mont St. Michel, hiking up the Glastonbury Tor, exploring Mad King Ludwig's fairy tale castle, stepping over broken glass in Govan and dancing to traditional music in Dingle.
I almost lost one shoe in the bog in Ireland, but managed to extract it along with my mud-soaked foot and sock. As my travels fell in the midst of the foot and mouth disease epidemic in Europe, each time I boarded a train or a plane for another country, my shoes and I had to wade in dishpans of disinfectant. Upon my return to the States I was separated from my shoes in customs so that they could carefully examine my shoes for traces of the dreaded disease.
After my journeys were done, my shoes were still comfortable and I wore them nearly every day for work and almost always on the weekends. It was about this time that, new to Southern California, I began walking on the beach a lot. Comfortable, durable and seemingly impenetrable to sand, my walking shoes quickly became my favorite pair of beach shoes. Even after they, too, began to tear, holes forming near the toes as with all my favorite pairs of shoes, I continued to wear them to the beach, even if nowhere else.
Last week I walked for miles on the beach in my beach shoes and returned home with blisters. It is officially time to retire my most recent pair of favorite shoes. Once black and almost-stylish, time and exposure to the sun, sand and disinfectant has rendered them an odd greenish-gray. Some areas are worn practically white.
I know I can't sell them, or even give them to Goodwill, torn up as they are. But before I relegate them to the dustbin of history, I wanted to give them a proper eulogy. These shoes have seen more of the world than many people have; they have trod where some only dream of stepping. They have been comfortable and good to my tired feet and borne my many wanderings. They were good shoes. I know I will not be able to replace them.
I had been searching all over downtown San Francisco for just the right traveling clothes and shoes for the epic European adventure I had impulsively decided I would pursue. I had found a number of quick-dry, no-wrinkle skirts, tops and pants, but shoes comfortable enough to sustain two months of walking day-in and day-out seeking all the treasures that northern Europe's museums and other cultural sites had to offer was eluding me.
On a whim, I turned down a side-street and came face-to-face with a pair of shoes in a store window that beckoned me within. I tried them on and my search was over. That was five years ago.
I get inordinately attached to the shoes I love, never wanting to rid myself of such faithful companions. When finally persuaded that this is the right and inevitable conclusion to the relationship, I immediately try to recreate those exact shoes -- never with any success.
My favorite shoes from junior high school were a pair of soft-leather, ankle-high, lace-up boots with metal studs on the side in a spiral pattern. The boots themselves looked a little like boxing or wrestling shoes, so when they had finally fallen apart after years of abuse from the tough New York streets, I firmly told my mother that I only wanted a pair of boxing shoes.
Dutifully, she took me to every athletic wear store she could think of, but every one yielded the same result. As I stood there, enthusiastic and dogged, explaining to the clerks what I wanted, first they would look me up and down, a look of incredulity stealing across their faces, then they would look at my mother as if she were insane for humoring me in this fashion and finally they would inform me that boxing shoes were meant to be worn in a ring, not on the streets of New York.
I've heard now that boxing and wrestling shoes are all the rage among the ultra-hip.
My favorite shoes from high school were first ordered from a Spiegel catalog for ten dollars. Manufactured by Capezio, I later learned that they were actually designed as folk dancing slippers and, again, were not really intended for regular use. Nonetheless, when the original pair from Speigel's wore out (as little canvas slippers are wont to do when you wear them on pavement everyday), we headed for the nearest Capezio store and bought several pairs of these folk dancing slippers -- I was determined not to lose my favorite shoes ever again.
I wore these slippers all throughout high school, and even into the beginning of college. I wore them with socks, with stockings and with bare feet. I wore them on the hottest days of summer and, rather stupidly, on the coldest days of winter. I wore them in the rain, the mud, the snow (again, stupidly) and sunshine. I even wore them into the surf on rocky beaches. I hiked in them, I climbed rocks in them, I moshed in them (again, most of this rather stupidly), hell there were even times I made love in them.
I destroyed one pair in the torrential mud and rain that was the twentieth reunion of Woodstock. Nothing official was planned for that reunion, not like the twenty-fifth, which was an exercise in mass-marketing. But Yasgur's farm was vaguely in the same direction as my grandparents' house in Upstate New York where we were headed for a few days' vacation, so we decided to drop by and see what was shaking, so to speak.
Dirty tents were set up, far more than I'd expected, in front of a small stage where bands too-stoned to speak or play properly jammed until they forgot what they were doing. Little shrines had been set up around the encampment, and hippies old and young left little offerings. Caught up in the moment, I carefully removed two strands of love beads from my neck and gingerly placed them with love and prayers for peace on a stand with candles and incense burning, protected from the rain by a tarp.
A few lopsided booths stood to the side selling tie-dyes, incense, love beads and food. My dad, who had introduced me to the music of the Grateful Dead not long before this trip, bought my youngest sister a tie-dye shirt with a huge grinning sun in the middle. She wore that shirt for a large portion of the first few years of her life.
But, as with the original Woodstock, the rain became torrential and the mud unbearable. We slipped and slid our way back to the black-cherry colored, faux-wood paneled Plymouth Voyager and drove off into the night, Rolling Stones playing and my now grosser-then-gross slippers relegated to the back trunk area.
When the last pair of my favorite slippers finally had become more hole than shoe, a quick trip to Capezio informed me that that style of shoe was no longer being manufactured. Instead, ballet and gym slippers were offered to me, but I had to decline, explaining that those shoes had no soles and so would not be good for walking on pavement. The puzzled clerk wondered why on earth I would wear these specialized shoes in regular life and I left, disappointed and empty-handed.
My favorite shoes in college were probably my size three boys Doc Maartens. They were my first ever credit card purchase. Actually, that particular buying trip represented a lot of firsts. I was a sophomore in college and had taken a week off from classes just before finals and winter break in order to attend my first professional conference, held by the American Association of Anthropology (known as the Triple As) in San Francisco.
While I was there, I took the time to look up an old flame of mine. Both of us were in new relationships, but we were still friendly. I walked the short distance from the Hilton to his residential hotel on the edge of the Tenderloin and met him outside, shivering in the December winds off the Bay. He was working in a shop not far away doing retail and piercings and after pizza and a game of pool, I walked him to work. I wandered around the shop, fingering the bondage gear, eying the PVC dresses and checking out the wide assortment of boots.
I wondered aloud if I should get a pair of Docs to protect me from the rain and mud of Oregon winters. Despite having already survived one, I didn't actually have a pair of boots. My ex- sprang into retail mode and before I knew it, I was whipping out my credit card for my very first purchase -- at a discount, of course. Just as I was signing, his current girlfriend came in, sporting the black hoody, piercings and Chelsea haircut of a squatter punk. She also had a perpetually running nose and looked as if she hadn't eaten in two weeks. I looked at myself in my heels, slacks and top coat and suddenly felt very out of place. Lip rings and a guy were the only two things that she and I would ever have in common.
The Docs stood me well for six years. I suppose if I had oiled them regularly the creases in the toes wouldn't have become cracks and then gaping holes, but I had wanted Docs because they were supposed to be low-maintenance, rugged shoes. Once again, I tried to replace them. But somehow the next time I tried on a pair, I needed the size 4 boys, though they didn't fit quite right and no amount of breaking in seemed to be able to make them comfortable. The old pair had fit like a glove, so to speak.
The Docs were officially replaced on my walking tour of Ireland. Even though I had purchased my new walking shoes specifically for trekking around Europe, I had thought that boots might be better for an actual seven-day walking tour. Not having hiking boots, I brought along the ill-fitting new Docs. One day of walking and the resulting blisters was enough to convince me that the Docs were done for good. I resorted to my walking shoes and in them found a pair of best friends for my feet.
Together these serendipitous shoes, found in a store I didn't know existed in a side street in downtown San Francisco, and I traversed northern Europe: climbing marble steps of museums, racing through crowds in the London Underground, slipping on ice in St. Petersburg, skirting fountains in Vienna, wandering up the winding paths of Mont St. Michel, hiking up the Glastonbury Tor, exploring Mad King Ludwig's fairy tale castle, stepping over broken glass in Govan and dancing to traditional music in Dingle.
I almost lost one shoe in the bog in Ireland, but managed to extract it along with my mud-soaked foot and sock. As my travels fell in the midst of the foot and mouth disease epidemic in Europe, each time I boarded a train or a plane for another country, my shoes and I had to wade in dishpans of disinfectant. Upon my return to the States I was separated from my shoes in customs so that they could carefully examine my shoes for traces of the dreaded disease.
After my journeys were done, my shoes were still comfortable and I wore them nearly every day for work and almost always on the weekends. It was about this time that, new to Southern California, I began walking on the beach a lot. Comfortable, durable and seemingly impenetrable to sand, my walking shoes quickly became my favorite pair of beach shoes. Even after they, too, began to tear, holes forming near the toes as with all my favorite pairs of shoes, I continued to wear them to the beach, even if nowhere else.
Last week I walked for miles on the beach in my beach shoes and returned home with blisters. It is officially time to retire my most recent pair of favorite shoes. Once black and almost-stylish, time and exposure to the sun, sand and disinfectant has rendered them an odd greenish-gray. Some areas are worn practically white.
I know I can't sell them, or even give them to Goodwill, torn up as they are. But before I relegate them to the dustbin of history, I wanted to give them a proper eulogy. These shoes have seen more of the world than many people have; they have trod where some only dream of stepping. They have been comfortable and good to my tired feet and borne my many wanderings. They were good shoes. I know I will not be able to replace them.