new kicks

From Schmidt & Weston blog

I am big on walking. When you have a camera, it's the best way to see things. It is also the fastest way to learn a new city, because you notice things and then you are less likely to get lost (because you get lost more... at first). It does make for poor driving instructions since one way streets are not really an issue for peds.

As a result of my walking everywhere, I go through sneakers surprisingly quickly. These are my latest. The brand is Keen, if such things are important to you. I like them because they meet three important criteria for sneakers in my life; 1) they have to be comfortable 2) I have to be able to run in them, because sometimes when you walk places, you find your self running slightly late - gotta make up time 3) Due to my vanity, sneakers must always remind me of being 4 to 10 years old, the days before puberty. I'm not sure what that says about me, but the more my feet look like Ernie's (from Sesame Street. Sometimes they showed his feet. Always sneakers.) the happier I am.

Oddly, I took this photo of my feet while on a historic hippy walking tour of Kitsilano, in Vancouver. The walk sucked ass. There was no stories about hippies to speak of, at least nothing specific. The leader let anyone come along, which means that money spent on tickets was wasted. Most of the people were old, which is fine, but as a result of being a group, lost all sense of other people using the sidewalks or even the roads. I'm still not sure if this is due to the average age, or just the inability of groups to have any situational awareness.

Me and C were embarrassed most of the time for being apart of such a large group. We stayed until almost the end because we thought that the truly good stories would come at the end. They did not. The message seemed to be that true hippies were here in the 1960's but these kids today with their environmentalism and wearing of the black and the tattoos were not worthy to have the word hippy bestowed upon them. Oh, and that the only acceptable architecture for Vancouver is that victorian or edwardian look. Well built modern cement houses with high efficiency were deserving of a scolding.

Okay, I'll admit that none of this was actually uttered aloud.... just the vibe I got from the group leader's tone.

Ironically, there is nothing more fascist than hippies... (neo-hippies are the worst, but most hippies tend towards rules, in my experience) especially hippies that "were there, man... you don't know, man."

I got bored and started taking pictures of my feet. It made me happy.