Peanut Nile croc boots by Rodney Ammons of El Paso:
Footwear for a well-dressed Thursday
November 4, 2010 • 5:35 am
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Oooh! Shiny!
I used to wear boots with a heal like that – not as fancy as that (black leather for the Goth I was) – but I think the heal changes the posture putting more pressure on the lower back, & as I get back ache there I avoid wearing them now. We should never have come down from the trees!
Shoemaker – heal thyself
O shame and dishonour to my name!
I shall go & get some seAlskin to make new boots-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/uk/webcams/
Glad the Prof has no foot problems – my feet were OK too, it was just my back. You should also commission some with a drospohila design…
Argh! Drosophila – I shall go & sit on the naughty step.
*shrug*
It probably ought to be Sophophora anyway.
Hyde Park Hipster.
Dr. Coyne, where do you store all these boots?? Very nice though.
I’m imagining a boot closet a la Imelda Marcos.
That’s a lol
you know, all these loving self-portraits of your feet are giving this place a somewhat narcissistic odor.
IMO.
the pastrami was nice though
Delicious boots, just don’t get too close to any elephants.
Love them.
I got a pair of Blahniks for my birthday years ago. Really beautiful. Not possible to wear.
Don’t your feet hurt?
As I’ve pointed out before, cowboy boots are immensely comfortable. Your toes don’t go into the pointy part. If they were so uncomfortable, cowboys wouldn’t wear them. They give a lot more arch support than sneakers, too.
I’d argue that cowboys wear them because they provide protection for their shins, and because they appear to be very durable. I wouldn’t think that comfort was uppermost in their minds.
It’s perfectly fine to wear them just because they’re beautiful, you know 😉
The toes are designed to slip into stirrups first time every time, and the heels to dig into the dirt while tog-o-warring some struggling large mammal.
If your feet are even slightly on the wide side, though, not so comfortable.
Cowboy boots look like they were designed to be a tool for people who must accomplish specific things. Interestingly, there’s no need for them to be beautiful, and yet these are.
Thank you for the explanation.
You’ve got to wear them in. When they’re new they feel a bit like splints, but aside from that I’ve found them comfortable on the feet even when new – it just took a while to get used to the feeling of walking around in splints. It feels similar to bike boots although I think they feel a bit stiffer – that’s just my opinion though; it’s been many years between the last time I’d worn my cowboy boots and the first time I’d worn a pair of bike boots, so I wouldn’t trust my own judgement on that.
Mine were never comfortable.
I suppose getting really goods boots might have been worth it, but I just switched to different footwear instead.
I have been wearing both cowboy and biker boots since I was a young teenager (that would have been the mid-60s. I don’t wear anything else. New boots need to be “broken in”, which is to say worn. After a short while, the fit is incredible. Seriously, your feet feel better IN the boots than out of them. That said, you need multiple pairs of boots, as you can’t (well shouldn’t) wear the same pair two-days running: they need to air and dry out between wearings. Although, Jerry “Imelda” Coyne may have taken that lesson a bit too far.
Are the toes naturally wingtipped (ie, one piece of hide with different pattern at the toe?
That’s a single piece of hide on the vamp: a head cut. There’s no wingtip.
All these photos look suspiciously alike! Do I have to call Photoshop Shenanigans? 😉
If I may reflect: October of ’81 when in the navy, pulled into Pusan, SK. Walking down a street, I saw the “Esquire” shoe store (the exact same logo as Esquire magazine), and saw a gorgeous pair of eelskin boots in the display window, the upper part made of eel also. Like a moth to the flame, in I went to get measured. Got two pairs, a peanut and a black. Operating out of rather cramped shipboard quarters, I endured a substantial amount of delayed gratification and forewent having them sent to the ship but rather back to the states, where they sat patiently at my grandmother’s house for a couple of years until I left the navy. The peanut pair bit the dust about three years ago, and the black ones (which don’t as obviously show wear and tear) are taking their last breaths. The local shoe shop guy (Korean) has congenially let me know that they are finally beyond reasonable mending (which has included rubber cement, both from him and me).
People compliment the boots but I tell ’em it’s a lot easier to wear ’em then to make ’em, so let’s remember the bootmaker in the same breath or two.