You’d hardly need three little birds to tell you, sweet as an apple or a cherry blossom, springtime is here. And if last year’s basketball shoes are beyond repair, maybe you should, in fact, pay some mind to the little ones’ blithe yammering upon exiting the clock and get a move on bagging their replacement – for the shoes, that is.
There’s a whole catalogue of ways to go about choosing your new perfect pair. Maybe you’ll decide to go Old School Original and opt for a pair of Converse All Star kicks. If you decide to go this route, you might end up wondering about the “Chuck” behind the star-spliced signature. That would be Charlie Taylor, one-time basketball team captain at Ohio’s Columbus High School, and long-time seller at the Converse Rubber Shoe Company circa 1922.
Chucks are famous today because they make for versatile athletic shoes, easily complementing almost any non-athletic outfit — to not make too much of a fuss about all the different sports you can play with your feet tidily laced up in their comfy interior.
Most likely, Chuck’s archetypal Hollywood love story had nothing to do with the shoes’ famous star patch, but just in case it did, here’s the lowdown …
As narrated by newspaperman-turned-biographer Abraham Aamidor, Charlie Taylor “met a fading Hollywood starlet on a cruise ship bound for Hawaii,” married her, and settled down in the City of Angles. Ruth Alder, lucky lady number one (Lucy Kimbrell would be número two), had been a dancer in the 1938 Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant movie Bringing Up Baby. There was adultery, a divorce, and a big post-marriage payout. There’s more to the story but that’s probably a suitable amount.
To return more directly to the podiatrical matters at — ahem — hand, Converse are not just some of the best sports shoes around, as Aamidor puts it, they’ve also become popular with “art students, the new counterculture,” and anyone self-consciously “hip, alternative, or ‘young.’” Plainly, there’s a lot to think about when you choosing your sports shoes. Considerations for durability, appearance, and social standing, as well, must be made. Remember to tune in next time for more choice bits of Tinsletown Shoe Stories and to read about the coming season’s most recommended colors.
Sam Walters is a writer living in Los Angeles. Her writing appears in print and online.