Whose rooms were bedecked in Bo Jackson and Andre Agassi posters, posters that sated a little satisfied void of American pop culture during some three years of my life. Shall I continue? This is getting indulgent, even for me, which I guess explains my reluctance to discuss Chuck Taylors, a three-year-old pair of which I happened to be wearing a minute ago before I realized I was wearing shoes while blogging.

And that I would be more comfortable without them on. This thought does not occur to me nearly enough; the night before last I passed out still wearing them. Not that they are particularly comfortable. They are just not uncomfortable. It's funny to think my Chucks are three years old, because they still seem relatively new. As Chucks go, you understand. The "All Star" seal hasn't so much as begun to fade. I accept mediocrity in my Chucks as I accept it in myself and in this blog post, which almost failed to point out the serendipitous fact that Converse is now an advertiser on this blog, which might not exist had companies like Converse yielded to market forces and shuttered their factories so as to save more cash for marketing. Thank you, Nike! You acquired a decent little product here. Would I rather be working in one of your factories? No I would not.

I came to be a Chuck Taylor person through the gateway of Kurt Cobain and one-stars and "angst," and at some point it of course occurred to me that commodified angst is still a commodity, and that Chuck Taylors would be offering some migrant girl in Shenzhen a job soon enough, this time making shoes for Shanghai hipsters, imitating to the Hong Kong hipsters imitating the Japanese hipsters paying homage to the Ramones...that we are social creatures, driven to imitate and impress one another, to broadcast our psychographics tacitly through our choice in footwear.

And yes, all that happened, very very quickly, and in the meantime I wore Chuck Taylors, which wore out very very slowly. You might say it all happened in the lifetime of three and a half pairs of Chucks, and you might call that "discusting" but any southern Chinese factory worker could tell you that was all anyone really needed.

From Hoops To Hipsters [Wash Post]
A Tribute To Converse Chuck Taylors [Angelfire]
Chicks In Chucks [Chucks Connection]
Nike To Buy Converse For About $305 Million [WSJ]
Converse Files Chapter 11; Will Move Manufacturing To Asia [NYT]

Oh look, here they are again, in some issue of Vogue.

Okay, yeah, at this point I am making a point. This is a whole other issue of Vogue. Still ugly. So what could possibly replace the Gladiator boots?

Hey, these look like the shoes that little Japanese schoolgirls used to wear, and then DIE. On the plus side, they're all under $735.

These five-inch Chloe numbers would be eminently practical if only I could figure out what season they were for.

Oh, here it is! Balenciaga again. Is there a person you know who could get their $3,495 worth from these tarantula-esque black...um, boots? Of course, for the less-cultured masses they have these python Miu Miu slingbacks. They are only $945. Hey, like my rent! Okay, you get it...Betch.

Kelly Likes Shoes [MySpace]
Why Fashion Matters [Times Of London]
Feminism Is No Match For A Giddy Pair Of Shoes [Independent]
The Shoes Maketh The Woman [The F Word]

I went to the Apple store on the corner of Prince and Greene Streets in New York City expecting the types of guys who wear T-shirts with slogans like "Oxymoron: Microsoft Works." This was naive. Most of the people in line were in their early twenties and trying to score a quick buck on eBay while basking in the media attention they were getting for being bored and broke-yet-well-capitalized enough to spend a few days buying into a fad.

Although the line (at the time I went to it) was already starting to circle around the corner of Houston and Mercer, I couldn't find that many women to interview. The few that I did approach were mostly young (between 16 and 20), pretty, and considering the circumstances, nicely put together. They were all, of course, looking to sell their iPhones on eBay.

In fact most people seemed to be selling their future iPhone on eBay either for personal profit or for charity (on one roughly-made cardboard fort: "Profits Go To The Wetlands"). These people will make more money sitting in line with their friends for twenty hours than I do working retail in a month. I was almost tempted to give up my story and grab a place in line with the stoned NYU student and his girlfriend I stopped to talk to. They were pleasant and open; so open, in fact, that the NYU student nonchalantly copped a feel on his girlfriend as she spoke to me.

A shorter-term profit could be turned selling one's place in line, which is what these two men were doing, albeit with wildly different asking prices. The man at left was asking $100; the man at right — closer to the hallowed Apple Store — $500.

Lines, while inherently laid-back and democratic, bring out anxiety, competition and rage in some people, particularly those at the end.

This woman was close to the end. Of the line, and her wits. She was, in fact, the first female I came upon who actually wanted an iPhone, and she was not happy to be waiting among the profiteers. She was apparently buying these phones for her sons and appeared a little bit shocked that she should wait in line for the most anticipated product of the year.

All in all, the line was more like the line for a Jack Johnson concert than any sort of nerd-a-polooza. A lot of people were reading complimentary issues of Heeb magazine. (The magazine's clever marketers were stingy, though; when I asked for one, a woman hissed that they were for line-waiters only. Touchy!) Some people sunbathed but (I know, I know, skin cancer!) seriously, some of these people needed sun badly. I met a group claiming to represent the company Rough Guides who said they were authoring a Rough Guide to the iPhone, as if it were not a mere gadget but some sort of sovereign nation with ruins and nature preserves and dirty public transportation systems to be roughed. I thought about this, and decided it made perfect sense.