2009 Sep 09: Dress Boots

Italian leather boots so wonderful they attract a heavenly halo of light. With a navy blue pin-stripe suit, ivory-topped mahogany walking stick, and bowler derby I shall be all set for a night on the town.

2009 Aug 18: The Great Grape Ape

There was a Hanna Barbera cartoon when I was a kid, Junior High maybe, I'm not sure because I wasn't allowed to watch Saturday morning cartoons, but it was called "The Great Grape Ape", something to do with a giant purple gorilla that played High School football. Our school bus driver at the time was this round, overweight surly guy in a stained purple t-shirt; can you guess what we called him?

These are my latest e-bay score and I do mean score, $25.01 including S&H, Puma canvas sneakers, men's size 9 they are totally sweet. They fit like wrestling shoes, very lightweight and snug across the arch - no, I never wrestled and don't ask how I know how wrestling shoes fit. I will leave that question as an exercise for the reader. But you may call me "El Rey del Mono"

eBay is my ultimate favorite place to find offbeat shoes, I got hooked about four years back with my Yellow and red suede Pumas. My one suggestion for buying shoes from eBay or any other online retailer is, know your brands and how they fit your feet before buying. The numbers hardly have much meaning anymore in terms of size, and while I don't want to come off as a xenophobe, I do believe it's an inevitable confusion of trying to publish sizes and sell shoes worldwide, with so damn many different sizing schema, that, as far as I can tell, are not published or regulated. Used to be, back in the day, you just had to know that you wore a size 7 in English shoes, a size 42 in Chinese slippers, and a size 8 in US men's sizes. And if you were a little adventurous, you might even know that that meant you wore a size 10 in US women's shoes. Which makes me wonder why it's not the reverse, since in general, women want to be smaller than they are and men want to be bigger than they are, because we all know what big feet means.

But I digress.


I believe for instance, that T.U.K. simply has no concept of what the size numbers actually mean, they just came up with their own idiosyncratic numbering scheme. I am convinced of this because I have to buy a size 10 men's to get them to fit on my foot without mashing my toes in the tip, whereas normally I am an 8.5 or 9. And no, I did not accidentally buy women's shoes, because they're marked with both sizes. Chuck Taylors, on the other hand, have the exact opposite problem, where they run about a whole size larger than they're marked, so if you wear a 9 you're best off buying an 8.5 or even an 8, but again, go to a brick and mortar and try them on first, because you can't know till you put them on your feet.

But back to the topic of my fantabulous new purple sneakers. When wearing strong colored shoes, it's important to accessorize not just one's golf polo, but one's beverage as well.

2009 Aug 14: Brown "shovel toe" laceup oxfords

These were the original brown oxford I bought for work about a year ago. I like them because of the modern toe, I've seen it described as a "shovel toe" which is actually kind of apt, as they tend to be very narrow and flat toward the toe, causing them to curl up slightly. With my monkey feet, it's easy to flip up notebooks and hook lunchbags up off the floor without having to bend over. Why bend when you can grab things with your feet? I'm dangerous barefoot. I also like these because they're slightly higher than your average shoe, coming up right to the ankle joint, almost like a very low boot. I've got a weakness for boots. Casual, dress, work, anything but cowboy boots. Guys from NJ should not wear cowboy boots, it's just ridiculous and more than a little bit sad.

They're a decent quality shoe, Venturini, made in Italy, rubber soles, remember what I said about rubber soles. At least these don't have tribal patterns or company logos, led's, squeaky toys, inflatable flubber cushions, or gummi worms molded into the sole. Alas, they just don't fit right. I tried to make them work, but after a day of extremely light walking around at work, the arches of my feet just hurt. Maybe some gel insoles would help, I don't know. I think, sadly, my feet just aren't made for Italian shoes. Six months after I tried making these work I bought the Dockers I talked about in yesterday's post. Boring, but they don't make my feet hurt.

2009 Aug 13 Bown Cap Toes

Today I'm wearing Dockers' cap-toe brown oxford, US men's 9W. There's a two-day moratorium on the six week long casual clothes festival because the State Board of Education is meeting in our building. These rules about what you can wear crack me up, seriously, I read email and just laugh. They take this very seriously at the State, I could be written up if I show up in pants made from the wrong kind of fabric. How can you not laugh? It's real life theater of the absurd. I tell you what, if they told me I had to wear a brown paperbag hat on Tuesdays, I would, and it'd be stylish, too. At any rate, I needed brown shoes for work, because it just isn't done to wear black dress shoes with chinos, and these were what I could find in a wide width at some discount shoe place with an actual retail front, Famous Footwear I think.

Some people would call these dress shoes (Dockers thinks they are) but let's be honest, they're simply somewhat dressy casual shoes. Men's dress shoes are not made by "Dockers" and they don't have rubber soles. Come to think of it, is there really such a thing as a brown dress shoe? I think they fall in the same category as short sleeve dress shirts, a tautological impossibility

Hey, I don't make these rules, I just report them.

2009 Aug 12 Granola stompers

These are my latest acquisitions, Skechers "Tao sneakers", another concession to conformity. They smack of upscale new-agey granola-munching bicycle-riding tv-eschewing, send-your-kids-to-a-french-language-pre-school NPR-listening ex-hippies. They're called "Tao sneakers" for cryin' out loud.

So how come I keep getting lost with these babies on my feet?

2009 Aug 07: Bostonian Black Wingtips

The first time I ever travelled to Europe, I experienced a fashion dissonance so profound it changed my life. There, out in public, men, gay men, men I knew, men I consorted with, men who are purported to be the definers of good taste, were wearing dress shoes, classic black leather shoes with leather soles, with jeans. Dungarees. Denim. It was like capers on cheez-wiz, Grandmother's pearls with a tie-died t-shirt dress. It was very unsettling, and yet, somehow, appealing. It was as if they'd gotten their American fashion sensibility from watching Hollywood movies, and in movies, they never show feet, so they were left to fill in the gap.

Today I am wearing black Bostonian wingtips, 8.5 US wide. I have a predilection towards that brand because (a) they have wide widths, and (b) they have a very traditional, almost victorian style. It's hard to find proper leather-soled shoes anymore, that don't cost hundreds of dollars.