Wayne D's Blog

It's time to retire my everyday shoes. About two and a half years ago I thought they were getting a bit ragged looking. Then some guy at the Toronto Golf and Travel show shined them up with some Super VII Leather Balm and convinced me to buy a tub of the stuff. It was money well spent, they looked good for the first year, OK for the second year but now the seams are coming apart and it's time to turn them into permanent water shoes, at least until they lose physical intergrity.


I expect the question popped into mind, why wear ratty shoes for two extra years? The problem is that I wear size 12 shoes and finding a nice pair of size 12 shoes can be quite a chore. My first stop was the ECCO store. My old shoes were ECCO's and I was hoping that they'd have something else, to be truthful, if they still stocked the same model I would have bought them quite happily. When I told the sales clerk that I wanted to replace my old shoes and asked her if they still made that model she said "no we don't". She then moved off to approach another customer who had entered the store. I was hoping she would have perhaps suggested something but she didn't seem interested in me. I browsed around a bit, didn't see anything I liked and left to search elsewhere. I tried both Zellers and Payless Shoe Source but neither store seems to carry any leather shoes. I'm a bit of a shoe purist and prefer, perhaps I should say  insist, on wearing shoes with leather uppers for everyday wear.


Next I tried Soft-Moc where I found a pait of Clark's that I really liked, unfortunately they didn't have them in size 12. The clerk was very helpful, she even took a shoebox to the head while searching through a stack of shoeboxes for size 12's. She did suggest a different model but it had a square toe. I prefer to keep away from shoes with square toes. It may be just me, but they look too much like clown shoes to me when blown up to size 12.


Then it was off to the Bay where they had the same model of Clark shoes as Soft-Moc did, and in a size 12! I put them on and walked around for a minute or two. Then I realized my left heel was beginning to hurt. Darn, was I willing to sacrifice years of foot pain for fashionable shoes? Nope, sadly I put them back in the box. As if to mock me, there was a pair of shoes on the clearance table that I liked. The last pair, but they were a size 13. I tried them on anyways, no dice, they were way too loose.


My next stop was Foot Locker where the Timberlands I liked were out of stock in anything larger than a 10 1/2 unless I wanted to take them in a bright tan colour that verged on orange.


Before I concluded my shoe shopping trip I took a quick look through Aldo but nothing said buy me.


The quest continues.