Despite my green anti-materialist credentials I have a secret vice. I like looking at pictures of shoes. I don’t buy them very often (protestant guilt, lack of money, lack of decent shoe shops in this one-horse town, feet that don’t fit). But I like to look.
So I am on the mailing list for Schuh. And so I saw today a picture of something called a Converse All Star The Ramones Hi (that phrase is wrong for so many reasons). And I went: I want them.
As it turns out, I am a late adopter. I discovered when I hit the internet that The Ramones have been a brand, in footwear terms, for some time now.
Maybe I should be offended by this. But I’m not. The Ramones were always more of an idea than anything else: it was only when they started dying that I realised they were actually real people. And only when I saw End of the Century that I realised they actually did real-life things like stealing each others’ girlfriends and getting their hearts broken.
Despite this, I never really believed in their existence outside of the band. The uniform look and the uniform names added up to something very pure and very abstract. Not a ‘manufactured’ band - they were a million miles from X Factor - but perhaps, in some ways, an artefact.
Which means that the shoe fits... just don’t call it a Hi. It’s a baseball boot.
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