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Hot Pot: Take Care Of Your Feet

After playing in a great game of box lacrosse a couple weeks ago, my heels were killing me. I took a look at my Nike Air Max sneakers, and noticed that both air bubbles has popped (most likely long ago), and were offering no support to my feet. I loved these shoes, and had used them for almost two years. They were mostly grey, conservative but aggressive, still had some solid tread left on them, and didn’t even smell like death, as most of my sneakers tend to do… but I realized that they had to go. My feet just couldn’t take it anymore.

I purchased a new pair of Adidas basketball shoes to replace the old Nikes, threw the Nikes in the garbage, and then I decided on a couple of rules moving forward:

1) No more air bubbles in my athletic shoes. I’m tired of popping Nike Air bubbles. 9 times out of 10 the bubbles pop before I wear the shoes out. Sure, it looks cool and feels good early on, but it’s simply not worth it if I have to shell out extra money for the bubbles and then also have to buy shoes more often. That’s good for Nike, but bad for me. Air Bubbles are done for this guy. No mas.

2) I’m still buying grey shoes. I don’t know why, but I love them. I also needed a new pair of running shoes.  I went with grey New Balances. Grey goes with everything, and makes for a solid casual option in many cases as well. I also love grey pants. Consistency!

3) I will NEVER pay $100+ for sneakers again. I looked at a bunch of sneakers that were “top of the line”, and almost all of them were nothing but gimmicks. Many had “cool looking” patterns on the sole, that would never work on anything but perfectly clean wood parquet, and others were so ugly they may have given me eye cancer. I saw kids wearing some of these shoes as I left a Foot Locker, and they all looked foolish. Knowing how much these young ones had spent, and they looked even sillier. So did their parents.

4) I WILL take care of my feet. Never again will I wait to wear my shoes out. As soon as my feet start hurting, and my shoes show any sign of wear, it’s time for new shoes. I’ve been wearing the new kicks around for the last day and a half, to help break them in, and my feet already feel better. Tomorrow I go for a run, and for the first time in months, my feet are happy at the prospect of going to work!

Instead of dropping $140 on New Nikes, I found a pair of understated Adidas shoes for $60 (on sale!), picked up running shoes for $50 (also on sale!), and then bought a Brooklyn Nets hat from Mitchell & Ness. After those three purchases, I was still $5 under ONE PAIR OF famous person inspired Nikes with air bubbles. I saved money, got great products, AND took care of my feet.

Forget looking good, and just make smart decisions. Function over fashion every time.