Ode to Blue Hi-Tops

He wears tan shoes with pink shoelaces
A polka dot vest and man, oh, man
Tan shoes with pink shoelaces
And a big Panama with a purple hat band
  — Tan Shoes and Pink Shoe Laces, Dodie Stevens, 1959 (lyrics by Mickie Grant)

My sneaks were starting to get pretty beat up, and I decided to do something a little different with their replacement. So I got a pair of blue Converse hi-tops (red's not my color) and some purple laces for them. 

Finding laces was a bit of a challenge. I'm skeptical of the "Internet killed the local retailer" trope, but nonetheless, I try to buy things from local independent merchants (or at least franchises) when I can. But I went to every shoe store, shoe repair shop and novelty clothing store I could reach, and could not find colored laces in the 54" size; I needed 54" because these are hi-tops, and 45", which was actually fairly common (Ike's Shoe Repair on Lake Shore had a pretty good selection), simply isn't long enough. So I resorted to shopping online, and found some at welovecolor.com (they specialize in legwear, and if you have a 10-to-14-year-old daughter — or perhaps you are a 10-to-14-year-old daughter — it's the next best thing to nirvana).

I thought about using a purple lace on one shoe and a green one on the other, but that kind of asymmetry doesn't really appeal to me, it's a little too unsubtle. But I got a green pair just in case.

One of my conceits (yes, I have a few) is that, during '74-'76, while everyone else in my socio-economic-age cohort was wearing Frye Boots and Earth Shoes, my friends and I in Brooklyn were wearing sneakers as street shoes. Now, "sneakers" at that time meant U.S. Keds, or possibly P.F. Flyers. This was New York, so Converse was uncommon, much like Levis, which were considered "exotic"; we had Lees and Wranglers, and called them "dungarees."

Unless you were an actual athlete, there was no "Adidas", no "Nikes", no "Reeboks"; I've always felt "athletic shoes" were overpriced and pretentious, and worn mostly by the most unathletic of people. (In that way, they were like SUVs, which are overpriced, pretentious, and driven mostly by people who don't need them — but I digress.) Sneakers weren't fashionable in any sense — that's why we wore them! We started that fad. But by the 1980s, diabolically enough, they did become fashionable — the "athletic shoe" had emerged, and a whole new class of ugly was established. By the mid-90s, they'd taken over.

Next time, I think, P.F. Flyers (Keds no longer makes hi-tops, alas).