Boots

I like to wear hiking boots. I'm lucky in that I have a career that allows me to dress leisurely. I get to wear blue jeans and hiking boots to work in a city where three out of four work drones wear suits. This means I wear hiking boots every day. This means I need to replace them every few months.

I'm a bit picky about the boots I want to wear. They can't be black. They've got to be brown. They have to be dark brown, not that light tan color that almost every non-black hiking boot is. They also have to not look like sneakers. Proper hiking boots are leather (or leatherish) and could be worn with casual dress slacks, if I ever decided to wear casual dress slacks.

A few months ago, I purchased some Timberland boots for about $50. Good boots, held up to actual hiking as well as just rambling around. However, it's time for new ones, so let's see what it takes to purchase hiking boots in Manhattan.


Shoe Stores

There are two types of shoe stores in Manhattan, measured by density.

The first type of shoe store has about twenty different shoes, heavily lacquered floors, leather chairs, and lots of open space to walk around in. As a rule of thumb, the more floor space a store has, the higher the prices. Shoes at these stores could be used as down payments on cars.

If you wanted to try on a shoe at one of these stores, chances are the salesman would go into a back room to find your size. Chances are, they have your size in stock.

The affordable stores have dozens and dozens of shoes, all lining the walls. Because space is tight here in Manhattan, most shoe stores can't have multiple sizes of every shoe style in stock. One store I stopped at was about eight feet wide by (maybe) 25 feet deep. The entire wall space was covered with shoes. One shoe of each style, heel against wall, toe pointing towards the center of the room. It was as if the walls were made of shoes. There were probably 200 almost-identical Kenneth Cole men's dress shoes available (one of several brand names the store carried). There were about 50 types of walking/hiking boots available.

All of the shoes were shrinkwrapped.

You picked up a plastic-covered foot covering and read the number on the tag off to one of the surly sales staff. "Number three hundred sixty-four in size nine-and-a-half," they'd shout down a small trap door. A moment or two later, a shoe box would be handed up to the shoemonger. That is, if they had the size in stock. Chances are, they don't.

"We don't have big sizes in that style in stock," the shoemonger told me. Big size? A 9-1/2 is a big size? She pulls down a shrink-wrapped sneaker that is supposed to be a boot. I look around and pull down #491, but they only have that in size 7. All of the other boots are black, tan, or look like sneakers. (#364 was the same style as what I was wearing. However, it was $90 here.)

I check the Timberland website and find the boot I want. However, you can't order from the website, you have to go to a store. According to the website, the nearest store that sells the perfect style is in King-Of-Prussia, PA. Bah.

The local Timberland store, three blocks from my office, actually has that style in stock and in my size. So much for technology. (Although the walls did not look like they were composed entirely of shoes here, they still had to call down to the dungeon for my size.) I rejoice, spending way too much for foot wrappings.

-Faux "thus ended the quest" Pas