In the wake of my summer of avascular necrosis, allegedly brought on by obliviously breaking a small bone – I honestly forget the name of it – on the underside of my foot, somehow, I started experimenting with some ideally more accommodating footwear to help acclimate and/or ease the discomfort brought on by the persistent ache in my arch and the disconcerting numbness in my toes – two conditions, I was told, that were basically here to stay.
At the suggestion of several folks, I started investigating this new (or new to me, anyway) brand of running shoe called Hokas. Whenever I spotted a pair on the street or in the elevator or wherever – which is easy to do, given the company’s dogged insistence on slapping their name in big block-capital letters across all their products – I’d frequently ask the wearer what they thought of them. To the last, every person in Hokas I asked spoke of them with a fervor that bordered on the rapturous.
I finally relented and limped over to the Hoka outlet on Fifth Avenue (which, incidentally, has since moved to a roomier location three or four blocks to the north). I was immediately skeptical. Regardless of the alleged podiatric benefits the shoes seamlessly provide, they looked like garishly colored clown shoes. But the store was positively hoppin’ with enthusiastic patrons. A salesperson working the floor engaged me and I dutifully unspooled my needlessly detailed tale of podalic woe, prompting her to recommend a “Bondi 8” model. I started perusing those and asked to try on a pair.
After all the street-side testimonials I’d fielded, it was kind of inevitable that the miraculuosly velvety caress I’d been expecting didn’t really materialize. I felt significantly taller in them than my already lofty six feet. But, in that fleeting instance, the problem foot felt newly cushioned … they didn’t feel bad, so I picked out a comparatively simple black pair (as opposed to their normal, retina-burning options like circus-in-town-style turquoise-&-orange, hot chartreuse, vomit rainbow and/or radioacitve-urine yellow), brought them to the counter and officially became a Hokalyte.
After a day or so of wearing them, I was moved to start writing a deeply ridiculous post for this here blog, weepily recounting my former habits of adjusting my sartorial choices based almost exclusively on my musical tastes. To that end, in my distant younger days, I’d started wearing black, hi-top Chuck Taylor All-Stars given that the Ramones wore them. Similarly, after hearing Jaz Coleman of Killing Joke extol their merits in an interview in the mid-`80s, I’d dutifully started wearing clunky black Doc Martens. In typical fashion, I floridly detailed my gradual embrace of other styles of footwear based on equally idiotic criteria (my stubborn fondness for Nike’s contraband Black N’ Tan dunk-lows, as detailed here). My intended takeaway, I suppose, was that I’d crossed a rubicon, of sorts, and was now forced to wear what essentially amounts to the dread “dad shoes,” and how – woe unto me – there is nothing cool about Hokas. You don’t, after all, see any sneery, post-punk iconoclasts wearing them, now do you?
In a fleeting moment of clear-headedness, however, I came to my senses and abanoned that waste-of-time entry. In walking around Manhattan, I now see Hokas on pretty much everybody -- jogging yuppies, irritating tech bros, balding dog-walkers, pony-tailed woo girls, disgruntled high schoolers, non-binary NYU students, grumpy octogenarians, nuns, everybody. I even bought myself a second pair (albeit not quite as cushiony). I’ve made my peace with them.
Or so I thought.
This morning, a reel popped up in my social media feeds of Michael McDonald – the high-piped fleet admiral of all things Yacht Rock – discussing the challenges of his keyboard parts on the title track of the Doobie Brothers’ Minute by Minute. And what was he wearing in this video? THE VERY SAME PAIR OF BLACK BONDI 8 HOKAS THAT I FIRST BOUGHT. Not Colin Newman of Wire. Not Cronos from Venom. Not East Bay Ray of the Dead Kennedsys. Not Daniel Ash from Bauhaus and Love & Rockets, but fuckin’ Michael McDonald of the friggin’ Doobie Brothers.
ARRGH!
Recent Comments