Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop
I'm over sauce now. Shoes are my new source of vexation.
I find myself in need of a new pair of sneakers. Most of my current shoe selection is Converse (or Converse knock-offs), which, in general, function great for my excruciating job of "sitting at a computer screen all day". However, I've recently worn through my singular pair or running shoes, and I have a trip coming up that will involve a lot of actual, honest-to-god walking, so I want something more suited to the task.
Basically, I have two requirements:
- For the sake of all-day performance, the shoe should be a sneaker that does not have a flat foot.
- I do not want to look like my dad, so the sneaker should lean more toward stylish instead of sporty.
Apparently, this is an impossible list. These two stipulations cancel each other out in 95% of sneaker-based footwear. You either get "street sneakers", which look good but aren't meant to actually be worn for movement, or "sport sneakers", which are always, without fail, horrifically ugly.
Now, you would think that, given the shear volume of shoes out there, even the remaining 5% would provide me with a nice selection of options. However, I quickly had to add:
- The shoe should not feel cheap as shit.
Why do so many of these shoes feel like packing material for cardboard boxes? Some of these soles are legitimately two steps away from styrofoam. Sure, maybe its light and comfortable to walk on, but I need a heel I won't grind into dust. I'm dead serious here; if I spend 30 minutes a day doing light(!) walking in a pair of Chuck Taylors, I'll wear through those things in a year, and those soles aren't made of 80% air.
But I am still not done. Because after all that, there is one more piece of criteria that I can't believe I have to actually add to this goddamn list:
- The sneaker needs have laces.
WHY IN THE WORLD DO SNEAKERS EXIST WITHOUT LACES. You know what laces do? They hold the shoe onto your foot. Now this is important, because your feet are on the bottom of your body, and gravity pulls downward. When you take a step, and your heel goes upward, the shoe needs a little bit of coercion to go with. That's a job for the laces. The laces are the press gangs of your feet.
So if you make a shoe, and you give it a good arch to cradle the foot, and you give it nice treads for solid traction, and sturdy walls to support the ankle... why do you think it's okay to let these shoes go flop-flop-flop up and down on your heels all day?! Staying on my foot is literally the one job I need these shoes to do!
Slip-on sneakers, what the actual shit. Are we all so braindead we can't tie laces anymore.
(No, I'm obviously not bitter that after scouring two shoe stores and resorting to ordering online I now have to return a $120 pair of shoes that clearly said "laced" in the description but are secretly slip-ons with fake elastic laces. I'm not bitter about that at all. Shut up.)