An Exercise in Futility: The New Balance 990v3. Or the 993. Or the other one.

New Balance's webpage on the 990v3 states: "The men's 990 features a classic design with a universal appeal...Whether you're running five miles a day or rushing from class to class, the seriously comfortable 990 takes you everywhere in timeless casual style."

I'm calling your bullshit, New Balance. Yeah, the 990v3 is comfortable, yes, it is great for running, no, it is not a "classic design with a universal appeal." You have clearly fallen out of touch with the world. The only way you get something this ugly to represent "timeless casual style" is if you pay a celebrity to wear it.

What is with the random mesh patterns everywhere? What the hell is going on in the heel area of the sole? Did a New England raccoon mangle this thing before it came out of the factory?

This is a shoe that is celebrated for it's ugliness. Amongst people who actually care what their shoes look like it is to be avoided like the plague. And is their any greater evidence that New Balance's numbering system has lost all sense of comprehension? That's the 993 directly above, and at the top of the article is the 990v3. In other words, it's the same fucking shoe, with just a stupider name.

It's dorky, fellas. Just because it was one of the original dorky shoes doesn't make it a classic.

Which is odd, because the original 990 is pretty slick. 

None of the extra pieces of fabric flying around, a minimal amount of weirdness in the sole. Retro New Balance has recently rediscovered this shoe, but, as is Retro New Balance's modus operandi, it's only available in D widths.

The 99whatever is your signature fucking shoe, New Balance. Look, I understand that it's not for fashion. You put serious technology in these shoes to make them the best running shoes out there. Excellent work, by the way.

You make a ton of shoes that are all space-agey running shoe whatevers. Those shoes can be ugly and no one will care. This shoe is probably your last real retro running shoe (I'm not counting Retro NB's shoes that have no business actually running anywhere, as detailed in a middle paragraph of this slightly dated but eye-opening piece on outsourcing.). Give it some justice. It doesn't have to be so ugly to be such a great shoe.

And, for god's sake, fix the damn numbering system. I'm drowning in syllables over here.

Get Shoe Jelly: Saucony Jazz Pro Low

A killer retro shoe from a backwoods running company.

They even make something called "Vegan" shoes which are made from plants or something.

The best part? They're fifty bucks a pair. If they came in double wides (or, hell, regular wides) I'd get eight of them.

The Saga of New Balance Basketball

There was this heavenly shoe once, lost to antiquity, that fit me so perfectly that I pranced around the shoe store in utter glee. They did not leave my feet for ten moons, and if I was a wise man they'd still be around somewhere as the centerpiece of a museum to my name.

But I was not wise. I was a fool. There will not be a museum to my name. Thinking that such a wonderful shoe would be manufactured forever, I traveled to the shoe store to find a replacement. "They are gone." I was told. "There is no more."

I was devastated. New Balance had betrayed me, as it has so many others, by canceling a shoe model after my love for it had been established.

As hard as it is to believe, that was a New Balance Basketball shoe that I loved dearly. I can't even find the shoe model online anymore, it could have been the 891 or maybe the 902, but those shoes don't seem to align with the shoe I still have dreams about. (Sidenote: Who else has dreams about shoes? Just me? Okay, moving on.)

The basketball shoe market clearly has some high barriers to entry. Teenagers get $90 million contracts.  The NBA All-Star Game has become a giant design contest amongst the brands. You've got random Chinese companies swooping in to sign stars. All to sell shoes to (mostly) kids who might not play a drop of basketball in the kicks themselves.

In comes little ol' New Balance, with a 'keep em at arms length' approach to athlete endorsement, and it's apparent that getting in this game won't be easy. It doesn't help when your old school models have been featured on lists like this, and the new school models have done things like this. And then Matt Bonner gets booed for wearing New Balance, and the cycle of uncool seems complete.

But New Balance presses onward. They have just released the BB82, their first basketball shoe in 4E widths since the 888 (a short EIF on the 888: Don't buy it. It's big and clunky and heavy. You can't run in it. The lack of movement it allows your ankle is just asking for an ACL tear). The back of the 82 looks decidely unblowupable. There's certainly little effort put into the aesthetics of the shoe, but I don't think people are ever going to wear NB basketball shoes looking for street cred.

Alas, I will not be doing a proper EIF on the 82 at the moment, as I can't just go around buying shoes all the time (blogger salary, fellas). But this bad boy is certainly on the list.

Matt Bonner's Shoeplosion

Matt Bonner is the only NBA player wearing New Balance. He's signed to them now, but back in 2010, he actually bought these shoes that exploded on him, as he didn't have a shoe contract. And that was probably a smart move by NB to sign Bonner, because if he had jumped to Converse, Lord knows he would have had a few more public comments ripping into his old sneakers. More talk tomorrow about New Balance's sordid history trying to make and sell basketball shoes.

(UPDATE: More hilarity, as New Balance no longer sponsors Bonner, but he's still wearing them proudly. Man, oh, man.)

An Exercise in Futility: The Converse One Star

I have a certain group of friends, that are, how do I put this? They're hipsters. They wear cardigans and skinny jeans and talk about obscure bands I've never heard of and I love them dearly and couldn't imagine life without them.

And they all wear Chuck Taylor All-Stars.

And when I'm hanging out with them, not all the time, but certain bars or events, where the ironic fashion sense is thick in the air and the good-looking people are everywhere, I look at my feet and think: "I'd kill for a pair of Chucks right now."

Part of this is my natural chameleon-like public persona: I'm always trying to blend in. It's an insecurity that comes from growing up a white kid in a black neighborhood. The more I blended in, the less isolated I felt. It's carried over into adulthood, for better or worse. It's a big reason this blog exists.

So if there's any shoe that I'm absolutely shoe jelly over, it's Chucks. People love them, wear them everywhere in any kind of situation, and feel odd wearing shoes that aren't Chucks.

So as I'm skimming the internet for shoes (because that's what I do in my spare time), I come across an Amazon commenter who *swore* that Converse makes wide width Chuck Taylor All-Stars on request. Yeah, it was a random comment, but I had to follow through on it. I mean, come on, right?

So I emailed Converse Customer Service. Their response: Nope. BUT, they said, their "entry level" shoe, called the One Star, sells at Target and has a wider gait than normal Chucks.

It's a cheaper shoe: it retails at about 35 bucks, and looks and feels the part. No reinforced eyelets, the white stitching pops a little too much, it's only available in black and gray, and it's clear they use the same length of shoelaces for the low tops as they do for the high tops. And there's a giant star on each side of the shoe that looks like it could easily fray over long-term wear.

I can see why people who wear Chucks regularly find it difficult to wear other shoes. They feel completely different on the foot. They're heavier than regular shoes, but all the weight is in the rubber sole, providing a solid amount of cushion (but no arch support, natch). The canvas hugs your foot differently; I can tell that this shoe will really morph to my foot over time.

There's a few issues, too. The shoes are probably a 2E width; I still had to go up a size and a half to 13 to squeeze my 4E feet into them. Even with that, my feet felt much better after I had switched back to CLE's. With how big the shoes are, you can't help but compare the things to clown shoes. I can see why my shorter hipster friends like these: they look far more natural on small feet.

And then there's that star. There's one on each side of the shoe, and my first impression of the decoration is that it's...girly. Not even just "of the female gender" girly, I mean "high schooler who talks a mile a minute" girly. Yes, that's a broad, awkward comment, but that word is there, lingering in the subconscious. If you're a girl with wide feet looking for a stylish sneaker, hot dog, you've hit jackpot.

And if you're a dude, well, you've got a choice to make. For this dude, I bought them, but unfortunately, I'm returning them. Nothing against the star, but the shoe is definitely a 2E, and despite upsizing, after walking around in them for a few days, I can't quite get my 4E feet comfortable in them. The shoe is still a solid option for the 2E masses (who have a surprisingly large selection of footwear to choose from, if they're willing to look) but again, the 4E feet get the shaft.

An Exercise in Futility: The New Balance MX709

In a previous post, I noted "The Great New Balance Divide" between dorky New Balance shoes and retro New Balance shoes. In short: dorky shoes - available in wide widths, retro shoes - not.

If there was any shoe that could break the mold of "The Great Divide," it's this shoe, the 709. Clean and modern, a stark contrast to the rest of the New Balance line, and available in 4E, too! In person, it looks slightly less clunky than what is seen in this picture; that "N" logo is a mighty good improvement over comparable misadventures. 

But, as will become a familiar theme in our wide width shoe search, there are issues. The leather upper, the cleanest New Balance has in it's line, doesn't fold properly in sync with your foot. So whenever you take a step, the leather jams into the area just above your toes.

By the end of a long day, your foot is bruised and you're praying for the pain to stop. And this wasn't a day of playing basketball or running or all of the other activities "cross-trainers" are supposed to be adept at providing, this was a day of walking. I can't imagine what the poor fellows attemping those activities in these are quietly suffering with.

And it's apparent that New Balance knows the issues with this shoe: the 709 is no longer available at the company website, and I recently spotted them on sale for 60% off at a New Balance Los Angeles store (sorry, no picture evidence).

Of course, I had bought my original pair on Corporate America's Favorite Dumping Ground: Amazon.com. So yeah, another day, another returned pair of shoes. The vicious cycle continues.

Get Shoe Jelly: My Adidas

Number of songs about Adidas: at least one.

Number of wide shoes made by Adidas: zero.

Maybe they'd fit if you took out the shoelaces?