Shoe Shopping with a Lindy Hopper
At one point, before you learned what Lindy Hop was, you would go to Rack Room or Journeys to pick out your new kicks, looking only for the most stylish, moderately comfortable models to match your cool preworn-looking jeans from Abercrombie and Fitch. You’d try on a few pairs, decide on one and take it home.
That was then. This is now.
You enter a store, eyes scanning the shelves for new Pumas, Keds, Asics, or other mod low-tread style shoes. Palms sweating, you pick one up, feel it’s weight, and immediately turn it over to look at the bottom. Too much tread, you put it back on the rack, unless it is really cool. If it’s really cool, you try it on in your
size and test for comfort. After doing a few triple steps, you worry about how much your foot might expand after the first day at the DC Lindy Exchange, and ask for a half-size bigger. You ask one of your friends (who is also a dancer, because that is the entire composite of your friend circle) at the store to do a swing out with you on the carpet. Then you try on the other size and swing out again, this time with a different person. If the shoe moves easily on the carpet, you consider it. If it doesn’t but you still like it, then you frantically tally the cost of getting your favorite cobbler to re-sole it with suede.
Ultimately, you end up having more dance shoes than street shoes, one for sticky floors (hard-soled –Aris Allen Cap Toes), moderately sticky floors (suede – Dance Store (Keds), concrete (low-tread sneaker – Puma), fast floors (grippy sneaker with a spin spot – Asics).
Caveat: God forbid you also dance Bal in heels – if so, multiply your shoe total by 2.
