Sneakers Make the Man. The Toes Know.

May 1, 2011

Aside from having some fun with the title of this post, I’m deadly serious about the topic of footwear.

Here’s a shot of my Geakers, sneakers that only a geek would wear. But they are comfy.

I don’t have a fetish like the coach of the NY Jets – but I do realize that feet are the very foundations of our lives. Without these little platforms below us, we might very well topple over and be impaled on any number of dangerous objects around us.

While that might be perfect fodder for Matthew Inman, the psycho behind http://theoatmeal.com, it’s not what I think should be happening. So I’ve become very focused on wearing better footwear. In that same vein, here is my list of reasons why good shoes can make you a better person. Feel free to share your own reasons or your own links to cool shoes. Props to http://www.keenfootwear.com/ and http://www.6pm.com/ and https://twitter.com/ZAPPOS for your shoe superiority and sharing.

Good shoes last longer than crappy shoes. I might be a fan of $8 pants, but I will gladly pay $100 or more for shoes that last.

Good shoes don’t hurt your feet. If you know how hard it is to be civil to anyone when you have a pebble in your shoe, imagine if your shoes had a painful or annoying aspect to them. Back in college, I bought a pair of coaching shoes (all the rage and very hip in the early 1900s) that looked great, but had a piece of leather inside that irritated my baby toe. I was vain enough about my appearance that I wore these shoes everywhere, but I realize that doing so probably ruined my chances to become president as they impacted my ability to focus and also slowed me down so that I would never compete in the Olympics.

Good shoes can be renovated. If you buy good shoes, they can likely be resoled or have uppers repaired or be similarly fixed if something goes awry. A bad pair of shoes might experience a hole near a toe and never be fixable. I posit that many of the unfixable shoes end up hanging themselves from telephone lines in communities all over this great country.

That’s my list. You’re welcome to share yours. Thanks for reading.