Have you ever seen someone wearing
Vibram FiveFingers Flow Shoes
?
To be honest, I think they look cool…and they kinda freak me out.
On the one hand, I’m a big fan of going barefoot. I’m the first guy to take off his hiking shoes and wade in the river…even though I’m not a big lover of cold water. I just love the feel of the earth directly under foot.
And yet…these shoes just look a little strange. They appear very simian-like to me, or shoes for gorillas. Whenever I see toes squished in their “stretch polyamide fabric”, I automatically think of a strange zoological experiment with ape camping.
Just look at these pictures and tell me you don’t agree with me:
Ape's Foot |
Mens Vibram FiveFingers Flow Shoes |
Is it just me…or do both pictures look eerily similar?
But perhaps that’s the point. Maybe they look simian-like because they bring the foot back as close to its natural state as possible while still protecting it. The FiveFingers site makes a point that would seem to bolster this thought:
“When you go barefoot, your movements become the movements of a child—playful and sensitive, yet purposeful and confident. You experience the unbound joy of stepping, hopping, and running across any surface on earth, simply to get from here to there.”
You can probably tell from this post that I’ve never tried FiveFingers. Yet, aesthetics aside, I plan to. Honestly, I really don’t care what I look like in the wild. I just care about how I feel in the wild. Am I warm? Am I comfortable? And these “shoes” look damn comfortable.
If you’d like to check out FiveFingers, take a look at these at IslandSurf.com
Mens Vibram FiveFingers Flow Shoes
:
Or if you have used FiveFingers, what do you think? Share your experience with a comment.
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