Reader Jesse sent me this photo from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Facebook page, which the Governator had captioned as follows:
“Ever since I came to this country I collected cowboy boots. It is a hobby that requires a little work.”
But Arnold is doing it rong, I think: I never use a brush on my boots—only a soft cloth. And it’s not work but pleasure: a meditative exercise.
I have to add that if these are all the boots that Arnold owns, well, I’ve got him beat by a factor of least seven.
On the other hand, those are really, really expensive boots, all of them handmade and many of them hand-tooled. (I covet the pair of natural alligator boots fifth from the left in the front row: natural, undyed gator skin is hard to find! Notice, too, the two pair of full-gator boots in the second row. Those are muy caro.)
When I visited the Tres Outlaws boot factory in El Paso about four years ago, they were working on a fancy pair, with solid silver decorations, that Maria Shriver (Arnold’s ex-wife) was going to give him for Christmas, and I got a close look at them. I believe they’re the third pair from the right in the front row. At any rate, Tres Outlaws hand-tooled and painted boots, such as the pair on the extreme left in the front row, run on the order of ten to fifteen thousand dollars (see some examples of Tres Outlaws’ work here). But of course Arnold can afford them—his Wikipedia page estimates his net worth at around $400 million dollars!
Well, I could go on and on about the boots in the picture, but I risk boring the readers, so I’ll cut this off—except to say that while I share Arnold’s love of cowboy boots and fine Cuban cigars, we part ways when it comes to politics.
