LIFE smile and act nice:

Remember Kid Power sneakers?

RESPONSE
Word on the street is that New Balance is a good bet. They're made in America (this isn't a "Buy American!" ploy--it's just assurance that the workers making these sneakers aren't being brutally exploited, just exploited in they typical corporate American fashion).

NEW WORD ON NEW BALANCE: They're busy shipping their manufacturing overseas, too. More worker exploitation to come.

MULTINATIONAL MONITOR and CORPORATE WATCH feature excellent watchdog reporting on a wide stretch of corporate transgressions, including those of Nike (do a search for Nike, another corporation--or the company you work for--on either site).

I had two pair back in the early 80s. One was a "running" model, royal blue with the trademark white zig-zag stripes on the side and the upturned rubber tip, the other, to my mother's horror, were navy with a white rubber toe and safe-for-kids CLEATS on the bottom. It's to these two pairs of early sneaks I owe my sense of ingenuity. You see, my best friend Susan and I had the exact same everything, and when she traded in her old model KP's for these new cutting-edge shin-kicking (a popular pastime of ours) weapons, naturally I had to follow. But the rule in my house at the time when my feet were still growing was that I had to wear sneakers until my toes touched the edge or they developed holes, whichever came first. Since it appeared neither would happen before Susan moved on to say, the greener pastures of Adidas Stan Smiths, I had to come up with a plan. I took the old KP's with me on a sleepover to my friend Amy's house, notorious for a never-ending supply of Girl Scout cookies and a tinyish, vicious beagle named Babes who loved the taste of shoe leather. Despite warnings from the parents, I left them out in the hallway when we went to bed that night and in the morning, exactly as planned, the shoes were mincemeat.

These days I'm just as industrious when it comes to getting my way, but I do prefer to amass sneakers instead of sacrificing them to a trade-in. I hate the idea of collecting anything, but my friends have convinced me that all those sneakers doubled up on my closet rack and lying all over my bedroom floor do in fact qualify as a working collection. Harumpf.

FROM KEDS TO KICKERS

The one constant in my life has always been my sneakers. I think I did actually have one of those little white pairs of girly Keds when I was 7 or 8, but I also remember around the same time begging my grandmother to buy me some black low top Chuck Taylor knock offs at some discount store. And I think I got my way too, even though she said that they were for boys and I was crazy. When I was eleven an English teacher assigned us to write autobiographies entitled Me, Myself and I. No kidding, this is a sentence lifted verbatim:

"I like to wear sneakers."

Uncanny.

But soon Kid Power was getting tired (I think they only went up to size 6 anyway and I ended up with damn big feet, a size 10!), and I had recently discovered the sporting goods store in our town with a wealth of sneakers way beyond the Stride Rite's selection we'd been prisoners to for so long. Nike, Adidas, New Balance, Saucony. And the best part was I turned Susan on to them. I brought her to the door and we walked right into a pair of matching Adidas Abdul Jabbar lows (my selection) and the ubiquitous canvas Nike tennis model with the powder blue swoosh. After consulting with her faithfully on two shopping expeditions, it was time to branch off and make my own sneaker statement: a pair of canary yellow Nike jogging shoes with a bright blue swoosh and sole, complete with triangle tread. Even if I said it was okay that she get the same ones she wouldn't have--these were outrageous!

JUNIOR HIGH TOPS

With my junior high heavy metal phase came all types of leather high tops, usually Nike, usually very white with the requisite red, white, or blue swoosh. I probably didn't care very much at the time, as long as I had a bandana to match (for around my neck, I swear I never wore one around my thigh). Then at the end of eighth grade I discovered Vans, and wore into the ground a pink and purple pair with a checkerboard pattern on the side. They were everything a sneaker should be: durable and cool with a feminine touch. After that came a long line of Tretorns (every color stripe including the all leather model), the pristine white of the Adidas Stan Smith and the two-lace Kaepa (what a gimmick, I fell for it immediately), and during my punker stage of late high school there was absolutely no choice: high top Chuck Taylors or nothing.

Now at this point the more holes in my sneakers, the better I liked them, and since even Converse could be considered the establishment they were much more acceptable in my group if you could deface them right away. But it looked dumb to draw all over them in pen, so I would do two things: buy a pair of colored ones and draw on them in bleach (it really works!) or buy a pair of white or light colored ones and write the names of my favorite bands in sparkly puffy paint and black marker on the sides. One side was for hardcore bands like the Circle Jerks and the Dead Kennedys, the other for my goth faves, Echo and the Bunnymen and Bauhaus. I was so punk rock that my grandmother cried when she saw my senior class picture (shaved head and ratty sweater), but sneakers stuck right by me.

SPERRY IS BEAT

In my trunk packed for college was a very ratty, very personalized pair of high tops, but I think I learned after a quick couple of days that maybe it wasn't so good to give yourself away so fast. I was living in New York City so most kids were wearing black, and the only sneakers I saw regularly were the New Balance running shoes on the few suited executives slumming it in the Village. But one really alterno new guy friend had some ancient Keds that were more than acceptable, and there were Chucks like mine (sans script), a worn pair of Stan Smiths left-over from prep school, and to my surprise, a pristine pair of Sperry CVO's, worn with pride (and pegged jeans) by my friend Adam, the Mod. Though I never wore short plaid skirts regularly or drove a Vespa, I did listen to Ska on occasion and I don't think sneaker-wise I wore anything else until after graduation. Never mind I did. They were solely for waitressing, a black pair of Adidas Sambas. Dang I'm a trendsetter.

FLY RIDES OF THE 90s

It was after college I got seriously into running, so for awhile I stopped my policy of sneakers for fun and started wearing them for function. I think my first pair was New Balance, I had some Saucony, Adidas, and various pairs of Nikes that for the most part I was unhappy with. Most of these sneakers were big and ugly (your feet swell in high mileage so I'd get bigger than I needed) and I would never, ever consider wearing them out, because of the way they looked and also because I didn't want to ruin them for running. (This was serious fitness, damnit.) I trained and ran a marathon in two identical pairs of heinous Nike Air Pegasus, and I was sure I was cured of my sneaker fetish for good. But then one day I bought a pair of black canvas hiking shoes to tool around Mexico in which were an excuse for sneakers if ever there was one, and when I returned to the states I laid my eyes on my first pair of Simples, which were unavailable in my city at the time. That was okay though, because I bought a pair of black suede ones on a trip to LA, and nobody here had them for at least a whole year. I was back.

I wore the Simples conservatively and exclusively until I suffered a breakup with my boyfriend of eight years. He was sort of a spendthrift, so I grieved by buying Hip Hop records and like a million pairs of sneakers in this order:

black Nike basketball high tops
fancy expensive Nike Air Max Lite running shoes
two pairs of molded toe Adidas (like Run DMC wears) -one green with black stripes, one gray with white stripes
a pair of Nike all terrain running shoes with silver stripes
Adidas blue suede tennis shoes
navy blue Jack Purcells
white leather Converse One Stars with a black star (personal favorites because they no longer make them AND I got them for $10.)
olive suede Converse One Stars with a purple star
and my newest addition, after no luck in finding the Adidas Campus in red suede:
red suede Pumas with a yellow stripe.
(These are a fine replacement, though I'd still be inclined to buy the others if I found them.)

I wear all these sneakers with dresses, I wear them with shorts, heck, I wear them with suit pants that have to go to the dry cleaners. And I can assure you they always look very hip.

CURRENT TRENDS

I've seen the future, and it's sneakers. Why not? They're fashionable, comfortable, utilitarian, and these days, totally excepted for all occasions. Plus, there's nothing like rubber to level the boy/girl playing field. Sneakers are getting a lot higher off the ground than I'd personally like, but to each her own-just be careful not to turn an ankle.

Currently, I'm coveting a pair of blue and yellow Vans at my favorite sneaker store in town, a skateboard shop that isn't frequented by the masses, and these $99 rugged-looking all-terrain get-ups that are almost completely yellow, if a more appropriate shade than my very first pair of Nikes all those years ago. I just lost my job so I'm supposed to hold off.

I'm sure sneakers will continue to be a part of my life, no matter what my age or socio-economic class. When I'm elderly I plan to mill around my garden in khakis, a big straw hat, and whatever modern kicks suit my fancy. I prefer to be cremated, but just in case (and especially if its in space) let it be known I wish to be buried in them.

There is one problem though that modern fashion-conscious humanitarians have to contend with, and that is the sneaker manufacturer as sweat shop slave-driver. After seeing Michael Moore's latest film, The Big One, which effectively gives Nike CEO Phil Knight the foot-in-the-ass he so deserves for his abhorrent factory operations in Indonesia, I vowed to no longer buy Nikes. And I haven't so far, but I have to admit I want to desperately. I know that the only vote we consumers have these days is our dough, and if everyone stopped buying Nikes they'd be forced to change their practices. But I do feel like I was handed this information on a platter and now it's up to me to do some research to make sure the other sneaker companies I support aren't up to the same shenanigans. One friend told me that Vans used to be a really great company to work for, but then they moved all their operations to Mexico. Admittedly, I don't know anything more than that, and since this story is about my love of sneakers you can imagine what a quandary I'll be in if all the sneaker companies turn out to be deadbeats. Still, once I know the truth, [I will try to find this information out and report back when I do, but in the meantime, if anyone has info--good or bad--about any of these companies, write and tell me: jen@smileandactnice.com.] it'll be hard to look the other way.

size small now half off!