{"id":33194,"date":"2017-08-10T01:00:34","date_gmt":"2017-08-10T05:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=33194"},"modified":"2018-09-18T11:12:49","modified_gmt":"2018-09-18T15:12:49","slug":"qotd-the-comfortable-shoe-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/08\/10\/qotd-the-comfortable-shoe-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The comfortable shoe revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a kid back in the 1960s and early 1970s, \u201cshoes\u201d still meant, basically, \u201chard leather oxfords\u201d. Ugly stiff things with a high-maintenance finish that would scuff if you breathed on them. What I liked was sneakers. But in those bygone days you didn\u2019t get to wear sneakers past a certain age, unless you were doing sneaker things like playing basketball. And I sucked at basketball.<\/p>\n

I revolted against the tyranny of the oxford by wearing desert boots, which back then weren\u2019t actually boots at all but a kind of high-top shoe with a suede finish and a grip sole. These were just barely acceptable in polite company; in fact, if you can believe this, I was teased about them at school. It was a more conformist time.<\/p>\n

I still remember the first time I saw a shoe I actually liked and wanted to own, around 1982. It was called an Aspen, and it was built exactly like a running shoe but with a soft suede upper. Felt like sneakers on my feet, looked like a grownup shoe from any distance. And I still remember exactly how my Aspens \u2014 both of them \u2014 literally fell apart at the same moment as I was crossing Walnut Street in West Philly. These were not well-made shoes. I had to limp home.<\/p>\n

But better days were coming. In the early 1990s athletic shoes underwent a kind of Cambrian explosion, proliferating into all kinds of odd styles. Reebok and Rockport and a few other makers finally figured out what I wanted \u2014 athletic-shoe fit and comfort with a sleek all-black look I could wear into a client\u2019s office, and no polishing or shoe trees or any of that annoying overhead!<\/p>\n

I look around me today and I see that athletic-shoe tech has taken over. The torture devices of my childhood are almost a memory. Thank you, oh inscrutable shoe gods. Thank you Rockport. It\u2019s not a big thing like the Internet, but comfortable un-fussy shoes have made my life better.<\/p>\n

Eric S. Raymond, “Eric writes about the shoes”, Armed and Dangerous<\/em><\/a>, 2005-09-09.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a kid back in the 1960s and early 1970s, \u201cshoes\u201d still meant, basically, \u201chard leather oxfords\u201d. Ugly stiff things with a high-maintenance finish that would scuff if you breathed on them. What I liked was sneakers. But in those bygone days you didn\u2019t get to wear sneakers past a certain age, unless […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,41,73],"tags":[311,618,1235,174],"class_list":["post-33194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-quotations","category-randomness","tag-1960s","tag-clothing","tag-esr","tag-innovation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8Do","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33195,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33194\/revisions\/33195"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}