Like any American kid, I were tennis shoes for years. Well, trainers, in the UK sense… because tennis gave way to cross-trainers to basketball high-tops. The only exceptions were the Rockport boots I wore to Central Europe in 1992 and a pair of cowboy boots gifted to me in 1995. And that was that, for the most part. But the 90s were the era of “Casual Friday” when you needed a smart step down from the suits and coats and ties of traditional business, and that meant something nicer than Nike.<\/p>\n
I spent a good chunk of 1996 and 1997 looking for a suitable pair of brown shoes… Screw Frank Zappa, I needed adult footwear, and I genuinely don’t know what I did at work for the first couple of years before I was gifted my first pair of Dr Martens at Christmas of 1998. Somehow I had in mind that it was the appropriate footwear of an aspiring system administrator, and that I needed to make up for lost time in the 1980s. And that. began the streak – for over a decade, it was all Docs all the time. I ended up with over a dozen pair – high, low, sandals, square-toed, steel toed, you name it. They carried me from DC to Apple to NASA and beyond.<\/p>\n
By 2012, I was wondering whether I needed to turn over a new leaf. Thus began a whole slew of new options over the next five years. I got Alden Indy boots for my birthday. I bought my first pair of chukkas, which were my last pair of Docs. I brought back Solovair and Lokes from the British Boot Company in Camden Town. I bought two pair of boat shoes for the first time in decades.<\/p>\n
But in 2017, I grabbed a pair of steel toed Blundstones. I didn’t need them for any industrial purpose, but it felt necessary. In a world where the assholes had the upper hand from the train platform to the White House, I needed to touch some of what I had possessed in my 30s. And that’s when I realized the boots mean something.<\/p>\n
But I haven’t had the need for a long time. For a year and a half, a pair of black plastic Birkenstocks have been all the footwear I require. And I feel the absence of the boots, because I want them propped on the rail of the bar. Or on the cobbles of a London backstreet. I want reason to need the boots, and I want to feel like I did in the old days when they were part of my uniform. Because back then, I did things. There were things to do. More than sitting around in circles waiting for life to begin again.<\/p>\n
Hopefully it’s almost time to get on your boots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like any American kid, I were tennis shoes for years. Well, trainers, in the UK sense… because tennis gave way to cross-trainers to basketball high-tops. The only exceptions were the Rockport boots I wore to Central Europe in 1992 and a pair of cowboy boots gifted to me in 1995. And that was that, for … <\/p>\n