Shoe Disaster
Sunday, March 29, 2009
I've known it was coming for a while, but today my two pairs of much loved work shoes - suede slip on things that cost about $10 each, both died. They were starting to go at the back, the uppers parting company with the soles, and that's exactly what happened in it's entirety today. To both.
I have a pair of emergency work shoes, and a pair of desert combat boots, but these are stop-gaps. I needed to bite the bullet and buy some shoes. I chose to do so online. Thanks to a remarkably unstable wifi connection, it took an hour.
I noticed a couple of things: for a desert, Arizona is remarkably keen on boating and deck shoes. It's also keen on "board shoes" which appear to be for surfing in. There are lakes here, where one could yacht if one so chose, but there is no surf, no snow. Perhaps these are skateboarding shoes.
Secondly, there are no interesting shoes for men. This is a rant in itself, one that I shall post another time, but the really interesting thing is that the shoes there are have either staid and sensible names or really aggressive and macho ones.
Sometimes, they are named after cars.
They are also expensive. Very expensive. So I have bought cheap shoes, because 'pon my return to the UK I shall be buying Docs and shoes made of concrete to keep out the weather. However, American shoes are marketed on the assumption that all men in America have laughably small genitalia.
Seriously! Marketers the country over think that American men all need help asserting their masculinity. This is why the cars are big, why some of them are called "muscle cars" (and it ain't the biceps they're talking about), why the handguns come in everything from .22 to fifty-cal (and anything less than a .38 is "for girls"), why the steaks are huge and why the beer is weak (so you can drink lots and look like a Real Man without killing your liver in one night).
I know a few American men. Not that well, because I'm English and therefore after seven years I am only half way through the "casual nods at a distance" process of getting to know people, but well enough to know that by any sensible measure of manliness they're definitely owners of a Y chromosome. They aren't Hemmingway, but then who is?
5 comments:
Why do modern shoes fall apart so easily? I've had mine less than a year and already they're starting to go. I shall have to invest in army boots or something.
It's basic capitalism. You make a product that is cheap enough for the hoi poloi like us to afford, using materials and labour that are guaranteed to fail thuis ensuring that you need to buy more of said product within a year or so.
Essentially, the strategy to adopt is the same as the Aristocracy used to use: buy something very expensive, which will last a lifetime, and you'll never have to replace it. Therefore you save money.
My own strategy is to buy things from people who don't like spending money either, so military surplus is a good way to go.
Thanks for the tip.
Today's throwaway society makes me deeply unhappy... but that's another post for another day.
There's a whole website of leftover military stuff, somewhere. I used to know where.
No interesting shoes for men - ditto birthday cards.
And deck shoes in the desert reminded me of a beach party i once held, in landlocked Oxfordshire. ;0)
I wouldn't buy shoes on the internet, because I don't trust the sizes.
And I'll take functional over interesting any day.
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