Ladies And Gentlemen: Joey Reid.

I present to you all: the first guest review on The Best of the Blank. Joey will eventually be transmogrifying this into a column about Ecology. He'll answer questions, address current topics and issues, and eventually make this world a better place, all thanks to the blog. And you, the readers. But mostly this blog. I would also like to take this opportunity to invite any of you with ideas for columns or single posts to submit them to me at robo_chic [at] yahoo [dot] com. Take advantage of the Wild-West-like conditions and get in while there's still plenty of gold in the stream! Open up a saloon! Or a brothel! All the things that made this country great will eventually make this blog great. So, for once in your lives, be a part of something important. And now, without further ado:

Joey's Green Revue
Product: Simple Play Toe sneaker, from the Green Toe line Cost: $93.50 with free shipping from Zappos

Green business is big business. Walmart, one of the 20 largest economies in the world, is trying to sell at least one compact fluorescent lightbulb to each of its customers in the coming year. In addition, Walmart is poised to become the single largest retailer of organic foods in the U.S. Why does Walmart care? One of their employees calculated that they would save 7 million dollars a year by upgrading the fixtures in their stores with compact fluorescents. As for organics, with the market constantly growing, it's just good business for Walmart to get into it; never mind any adverse impacts on the industry.

Although vegetarian shoes have been available for a long time, green shoes just started popping up. Recently, Simple began marketing a new shoe aimed at the green consumer. Simple use the tagline "Shoes with less stuff in them," for their Green Toe line of shoes and sandals. The concept is simple, and Simple are not alone in the market. Camper recently released a line of modular shoes called Wabi. The Camper website describes the horrors of shoemaking, the number of components, the complexity, the nastiness, and offers Wabi as the solution: three interchangeable parts, recyclable materials, replaceable units, something to please everyone. Well, almost everyone, since there's no Camper store in Minnesota, and they're pretty expensive, so you have to spend a fair amount of money on somewhat blind faith. Several places in the Twin Cities carry the Green Toe line of Simple shoes, at somewhat more reasonable prices than the Campers.

After four years, and a ridiculous number of kilometers (miles), I've nearly worn through the heels on my old pair of Campers. I love my Campers; they were comfortable, waterproof, windproof, fashionable and unique. Someone once recognized me at a urinal just from my shoes. Anyway, I figured it was a good time to get something new and the Simples seemed like the perfect choice for a sustainability minded person like myself. I purchased the Play Toe sneakers from Zappos.com for $93.50, a $3.50 premium over Simple's own online store, but with free shipping both ways, in case they suck. The shoes arrived, signed for by my caretaker, in a recycled cardboard shoe carton, complete with laces and crepe paper!

In terms of aesthetics, all you need to know is that these shoes literally make girls scream (in joy, not horror); it's happened to me more than once in the last two weeks. Comfort, is a different matter. If anything these shoes love to contradict themselves. The ped-bed insert actually does sort of massage your feet as you walk, which surprised me. But no ped-bed will ever make up for a lack of cushioning, structure and anatomical design. The shoes lack all semblance of arch support. The unstructured footbed, combined with the essentially flat crepe rubber sole, results in a jolting stride. After two weeks, I feel pain in the balls of my feet, where I've never felt pain before. In contrast to the painful soles, the jute uppers breathe well and create a great climate for my toesies. But even that relative calm is destroyed by the hurricane of a disaster that is the jute laces. Whoever decided that stiff, hard, inflexible, thick laces were a good idea should be fired. They don't tie well. I have to double-knot them, or they'll untie within a few minutes. They're uncomfortable, the hard, thick nature of them digs into the top of my feet, forcing me to tie the laces looser than I'm accustomed. Finally, the damn things don't seem to be very durable, the only excuse I could think of for them. One of them has already frayed halfway through. Why not just replace them? Why not indeed. That would be wasteful, these shoes are all about green production, if you have to throw out a part of them a soon as they arrive, they've failed.

Which leads me to perhaps their greatest failure, other than the pain inducement. The rubber sole, as cool looking as it is, seems to be rubbing off in small pieces. The cutout under the big toe is already wearing from contact with the ground. Looking at these shoes, I highly doubt the soles are replaceable. So what's the point? It would seem that I just spent $90 to keep a bunch of stuff out of the environment, only to dump a fragile pair of shoes in the trash in the not too distant future. I could be wrong on the durability, but if the pain keeps up, I may never find out. Let me summarize the design principles for you: green materials, cute, natural looking colors. Someone forgot to mention that shoes can support natural walking motions or impede them. They also forgot that their ultimate goal should be to keep them out of the landfill as long as possible. The toxic materials that went into the creation of my old Campers will probably be offset by the amount of time I wore them, especially in relation to the Simples. If Campers would just resole them, I wouldn't give a damn about green materials. Some cobblers will resole Campers, so I may try that option. Actually, my Campers would be perfect if the leather had come from organically raised cows, and was tanned non-toxically (progress is being made on this front,) or if they used recycled leather.

Still, these shoes bring some good into the world. They remind me of early digital cameras. They were big, but not huge, they took pictures, and you could see them right away. Wow! Actually, they were a lot like polaroids, but easily transferred onto a hard drive or floppy disk. The image quality was horrific: poor color rendition, poor dynamic range, poor resolution. The cameras were slow, difficult to use, expensive. Film trumped them in every aspect save one, the ease of transferring onto a computer. My experience with the Green Toe shoes is similar. They suck, in most aspects save one, the materials used in construction. Everything else should improve with time, just like digital cameras. Buying one of these shoes now encourages more businesses to make greener products. They'll figure out the durability thing and the comfort thing with time, or they’ll go out of business.

With that in mind, these shoes seem to be designed for the early adopter, the person with a multitude of shoes, who can wear them out on a Friday night, without having to wear them all day for the rest of the week. If you buy a pair of shoes every year, if you love the latest thing, if you love cute, and green, these are the shoes for you. If you're primary concern is long term sustainability, there are some serious issues with these shoes.

Style: ****
Comfort: *
Green: ****
Durability: **

--Joey Reid