As any New Yorker will tell you, at least one good pair of shoes is de rigueur in this pedestrian oasis. You can usually tell how far along someone is in their New York life cycle by their shoe collection. Newbies tend to have a few old pairs they cling to like safety blankets linking them to their comfort zones. After a season or two, the sharper ones wise up and ditch the ratty nostalgia for more practical, stylish walkabouts. Eventually the adjectives switch place and style trumps sensibility. And so on, until through a confluence of subway riding, job interviewing, party-hopping and Fashion Week exposure, they become fluent in the unspoken language of shoe-reading. Women have been practicing this craft all over the world for millenia, but at the turn of the 21st century, NYC is perhaps the only American city that indulges and encourages Men to follow suit, right down to their soles, until they too are prone to throwing shoe fits in front of god, girl and country.
Last weekend, before Terre went traipsing off to Machu Pichu, we went sole searching. He couldn’t finish packing without a new pair. For Peru? Let’s see, what matches donkey-riding butt rashes? In my village, we call them chanclas, and our moms tend to throw them across the room at us when they’re not smashing cucarachas with them. I tagged along with him to Soho because I haven’t bought any since last season when, like a real New Yorker, I bought two pair – one for work, one for play. By this math, there should be 8 new shoes in your closet every year, the cost of which could pay someone’s rent in any other city. My pad is a shoe-less zen zone, and with every new pair that clutters up my foyer, I feel more at home.
The store we went to was on Broadway, below Houston. It was packed with homeboys, fly girls, and a smattering of Euro tourists and Japanese hipsters. The guys working the store were serving up b-boy style with their angled caps (“lids”), hoodies, chains, trimmed beards. The customers were unruly but civilized, calling dibs with nods and sighs. Boxes and tissue paper flew above our heads, before our faces and yes, underfoot. Groans, often from the size 8-9 set like me, signaled dashed hopes. Self-conscious props, like Wall Street caterwauling, moved stock back and forth in a snap. Terre went through the appropriate stages of shopping – he started with the pair he really wanted, sampled a few other distractions, made a few substitutions and eventually went back and walked out wearing the pair that kick-started our kicks-hunt. I, alas, found nothing. A few things came close, but nothing stuck. Until…
A couple days ago, I found myself at Shoe Mania in Union Square. As Techno videos blared over the monitors giving the space an Ibizan vibe accentuated by the Italian and German accents asking for shoes in Euro sizes, I made my way through the racks. The first pair to stop me was a pair of green leather Vans slip-ons with little dollar sign logos in the lining. Next, I spotted a pair of Puma Moon Jammies in black with red and orange details. After negotiating with the Bronx dykes, I wrangled the clerk to find both of these in my size. He came back empty-handed. Curse my damn averageness, I texted to Twitter on my Crackberry. It was a second-pair half-price sale, so I could not walk out shoe-less again, especially with a new credit card in as many weeks burning a whole in my wallet and soul.
As I went down the line – La Coste, Nike, Puma, Tsubo, Merrell, blah blah, I nearly conceded defeat. Then, there they were, on the Adidas rack – the pair I could daydream of sleeping in. They were slim, snug slip-on booties that stretched at the curved ankles, black with dark blue stripes and little breathing holes on the upper, capped with a wee brass logo on the back – the Adidas Porsche CLM. I approached cautiously, wary of being burned again. With a deep breath and a resigned air, I sent the clerk off to that parallel universe to fetch the cure for all that ails me. Therapy, religion, narcotic diatribes, nothing could reverse my genetic and social flaws – but these shoes, this could be a start. 
While I waited, I couldn’t stop thinking about the discount on the second pair. I went back to the green Vans and noticed the display model was size 8.5, just under the 9 I usually wear. When the clerk came back with a blue box snuggled under his arm, I felt my fortune turning. Emboldened and greedy, I sweet-talked him into letting me try and buy the display pair. I could order them online, or find them in another store, but that’s clearly not the point. During the time that he was gone – again – I tried on the CLMs and had a slow, internal petite morte, leaning back, sighing, steeped in deep tristesse.
I was snapped out of my glaze by Terre buzzing on the crackberry – from Machu Pichu? “Now that you’ve been to the mountaintop, did you see the mothership,” I asked, creeped out by the fact that reception reached way down there. Ignoring his complaints of altitude sickness, I texted him a play by play of my crisis. The clerk had returned and I was desperately, publicly squeezing my Geisha foot into the smaller size to no avail. I was prepared to live with a bit of discomfort in return for the instant gratification, but these were actually cutting off my circulation. Quoting T’s catch phrase du jour, I texted back – “I can’t, I just can’t…” I couldn’t bring myself to handing them back to the clerk, so I set them down next to another box and took the long way to the register. Outside, I sat on the steps of Union Square as the skaters whizzed by and slipped them on. “Nice kicks,” someone muttered. “Yes, they are…” I beamed.
The interview w/ Prosumer & Murat is up on Resident Advisor. My tidbits about Prosumer voguing in sex clubs with Danny Wang didn’t make it to the final; ditto for the photo evidence. But you can peep for yourself on Prosumer’s Myspace. I’ve sworn to never publish the rest of the pix or risk being murdered. The artwork for the cover recreating Ike & Tina’s “Outta Season” LP got cut, but today by sheer coincidence I received a stack of promos including the CD with the original. Which makes yours truly, one self-satisfied little music nerd.
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