Major acquisitions UPDATED

Excuses, excuses, I bought shoes. $35 shoes, but still, money was exchanged for footwear. There's no denying it.

< excuse > Turns out that a summer of endless walking around should mean bringing along sensible shoes. I failed to do so, and ended up with two beat-up pairs of flats; running shoes I can neither run nor walk in comfortably; also-beat-up silver Pumas at least a half-size too small; and a pristine pair of beige/tan/nude/whatever spectator pumps that will be great when it's neither rainy nor over 90 degrees, but that for now just sit there looking like they belong to some more glamorous person than myself. < /excuse >

Here's how it went: I entered a West Side shoe store that had a "70% Off" sign, because of the sign, of course, but knowing full well that said discounted items would be the more hideous of last spring's impractical-even-if-they-were-attractive stilettos. Once inside, I fought off a brand representative intent on selling me a French sneaker somewhere between Keds and Converse and remarkably like a shoe whose name I've forgotten that effectively made you popular if you wore it in sixth grade in 1994.

The brand this woman was there to promote did look more or less like what I wanted, and had a name that suggested French-Jewish (dare I say Francophilic-Zionistic?) origins, but cost more than either of the familiar makes it resembled, and on top of that had all these odd dents around the ankle-heel area that the saleswoman insisted would break in in time (do shoe-salesfolk genuinely believe the adults they are dealing with have never before bought shoes, and will fall for the 'it doesn't remotely fit now, but one distant day it will' scam? Yes, shoes break in, but slightly, and only if they're leather. Stiff canvas dents are going nowhere.) She gave quite a speech in marketing lingo about how she's attempting to get the word out about this exclusive item from France, but barely available in the States, so much so that afterwards I up and got a log of goat cheese made in Vermont.

(The woman was also offering anyone who so much as glanced at the shoes a glass of Champagne. I refused each of the numerous times this was offered, and later overheard two of the store's regular staff discussing whether any customers were accepting a glass, and apparently none were. This made me think both of how everyone knows alcohol lowers shopping inhibitions, and of how some early-20th-C French writer once referred to Jews as "la race sans ivrognes." Clearly, the UWS - however much changed in recent years - is still not the place to use Champagne as a catalyst for shopping.)

After some hours of pondering and iced coffee and almond croissant consumption, I decided on the American variant - bright red Keds. (I also seriously considered navy, beige...) I thought they looked sort of now, more so than just about everything else I own, which I figured was probably a good thing, but my mother articulated just what it is they look, and the word she used was "hipster." She's onto something - Googling 'keds hipster' brought me to this page bearing an image of, alas, my new shoes. Oh well. If people think I chose flats over heels and $35 over something more expensive ironically, so much the better.

UPDATE

Keds are not, in fact, so very now. A 2006 Sartorialist post reveals them to be so very 2006; the commenters there insist that the shoe's revival is totally passé, perhaps dating as far back as 2005. Still, this has to be an improvement from looking so very 1998, as per usual, that is, unless 1998-revival is the new thing...