I moved to Los Angeles around 1980. My job at Snazelle had ended, and I was directing the animation for Joe Dante's Twilight Zone episode. The production house was in North Hollywood, which was then a sad, deserted commercial area. At lunch I wandered into a shoe store where they still had shoes from decades before. Of course I was the only customer. The predatory elderly shoe salesman seized the opportunity.
He squeezed my big feet into shoes that were way too small and convinced me they fit, that they just needed breaking in. It was absurd. I bought about five pair which I carried back in a big stack. Jon was appalled when I told him about it.
I think I saw it as a window into the past, that somehow, wearing them, I could cross over. nuts!
6 comments:
What marvelous shoes. Yes, you could cross over in those. When I was last in a store with old inventory--never sold, never worth selling, the straight pinned price tags rusting the shirts--I felt I would be dragged over. Have you read/heard John Cage's shoeless tale that begins: "Once when I was a child in Los Angeles I went downtown on the streetcar." It's #31 at the Indeterminacy site:www.lcdf.org/indeterminacy/index.cgi
straight pinned price tags rusting the shirts-
rusting and also the rustling of the old tissue paper--
cool recollection, katy!
These shoes are exquisite. Do you ever wear these shoes (if you know you're going to be sitting down all evening)?
As usual, I want to see more, more, more.
I know you probably don't, but I have to ask: Do you still have all 5 pairs? Or photos of the 5 pairs?
What shoes are you wearing at this very moment?
And what about you, Katy? What shoes are YOU wearing at this very moment?
Everyone has better shoes than I have. I did get a pair of blue sandals shown in the middle of this post:
http://hamgovan.blogspot.com/
2007/06/you-might-be-in-alabama-if.html
alas, those are not my shoes. I just grabbed the image off ebay.
I remember being at a party in the 60's, full of beer, and a guy telling me they'd discovered a way to process clothing from the past so you could hear what the person was saying when he/she wore the clothes.
I was so naive and eager for a fantastic future...
He was just trying to impress you. It reminds me of my blind date with a schizophrenic, which I plan to blog about soon.
I bought a vintage dress at a flea market once that I thought was so cool. The first (and only) time I wore it, I discovered it had straight pins all over it, as if the dressmaker perhaps had not finished. It was a painful experience.
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