Hoo-boy. Here we go. I'm not exactly sure how this came about. I bought a pair of Pumas years back, I liked them, and noticed they looked similar to a pair of Adidas. I started doing some digging, went down a random shoe-history rabbit hole, and then decided to write up a post about basically ALL of the shoes I've worn since high school. It's...mostly a waste of time, but I thought I'd finally post it. It's a rambling thing, with pictures. And, again, I'm not exactly sure how it came about.
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There were two brothers who ran a shoe factory in Germany. The younger was innovative and knew that paying a famous athlete to wear the shoes in ads could benefit their sales. He convinced his older brother to try and sign the best, most exciting athlete at the time, in track and field sports, to a contract. They were successful. Rudolf, the older brother and Adolf, the younger, made it to the Olympics in Berlin in 1936 and signed Black American athlete Jesse Owens to wear their running shoes.
Eventually Rudi and Adi had a falling out, with Adi leaving to start his own show company in a factory across the river from his brother's factory. These guys were the Dassler shoe-making family, and Rudi's company still has the white support strip and retains the name from the past: Puma (Super Liga):
While Adi just named his company after himself: Adi Dassler, or, better known as Adidas:
That might be one reason the Puma Super Ligas and Adidas Sambas are nearly identical beyond the side support/design decal.
Japan got in on the game and created the similarly designed Onitsuka Tiger variety. This originally was a running shoe, but Bruce Lee made them famous in one of his films, and Quentin used them as homage for Uma in Kill Bill:
I did get a pair of the Super Ligas, from Puma, but I've heard certain people extoll the virtues of the Sambas and other pockets that swear by the Asics, the Onitsuka Tigers. I may go in that direction in the future, the Asic direction, but the whole thing got me thinking of my own footwear, and basically, er, thirty years of my own shoe history.
That's the rambling discourse that follows, me grabbing pictures of my former (and current) shoes and talking about it. Not very scintillating...
I love my sandals, and back in the day---when I was in high school---Birkenstocks were seen as a choice about a lifestyle, one that I wasn't exactly a part of, but a choice nonetheless. The first ones here are the normal Arizonas:
But I preferred the Monterreys. They extended the leather toppers backwards (although it may be hard to see):
For some reason, they stopped making these.
Then there were the Doc Martens, boots I originally got in high school, wore for ten years, and then got another pair. Those lasted for another ten years, so there were two decades worth of Docs available for me feet:
And Chucks, old worn in Chuck Taylor All-Stars, one of the best shoes and one I still wear regularly. (I'm wearing them as I type this, anyway.)
In New York I found a pair of slip-on dressy shoes. They were branded as Bostonians, they were originally $400 marked down to $80, and I bought them. They cut the back of my ankles for two weeks, the blood coagulating on my black socks. Finally I broke them in. They were so great I had them resoled twice. They looked like these:
There was a time when I was determined to wear shoes that were made only from union shops and from fair trade sourced materials. It sucks that this continues to be a near impossibility. Anyway, I found the following shoe on the Black Spot offers, from the Adbusters people:
They look...fine enough. One of the comments in their review section---which incidentally were across the board negative---made me laugh and laugh. I still remember it, and after a handful of legitimate complaints you get to this one sentence review: "These are only available at the toilet store."
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The "...toilet store" joke still cracks me up, but it led me to a wall. What was I trying to say? What am trying to to say?
I still don't know. Oh well...another draft dealt with.
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