Yesterday, I went to Big 5 in Ballard to
buy a new pair of running shoes. The heels of the old pair had worn out
considerably. When that happens, my knees start to hurt. Big 5 is a big sporting
goods store. They sell everything from fishing rods to shotguns to inflatable
kayaks. Every time I pay them a visit, there seem to be fewer employees than
the previous time. A lot of retail stores have gone out of business. Half of
the retail spaces at any given strip mall are empty, the windows full of “for
lease” signs. Seattle is too expensive. You must either be a nail salon appealing
to the vanity of trophy wives and/or IT geniuses seeking the grail of
singularity, or a coffeehouse serving beverages expertly engineered with
precise amounts of steamed milk and vanilla extract. Like San Francisco and New
York City, Seattle has become a city of assholes.
All the running shoes are
mounted on the wall. Some are on sale. I look for those. My preferred brand has
been Saucony, but my last shoes have been crummy. The insoles slide up and the
fabric wears out too soon and my toes poke through. I choose a pair of
Skechers. The sole is thick and solid with a distinct tread. I look for a clerk
to go in the back room and find me a pair in size 12. Sizes in shoes vary
wildly. There’s no such thing as a standard size anymore. For years, I’d worn a
size ten. Then ten became absurdly too small. I felt like a maiden of the Song
Dynasty hobbling daintily about with bound feet. Now I generally go for a size
12. The one clerk I’ve seen so far in the store who was standing conveniently
in the shoe section has disappeared. I spot him in the gun section helping a
man select a hunting rifle. I go to the counter and ask if there’s a clerk who
can help me. The young woman gets on a mike and requests a clerk for the shoe
section. I return to the shoe section and a young man appears from behind the
door to the storeroom. I ask for a pair of the shoe I’m holding in a size 12.
He returns with a size 12. They’re way too big. I feel like I’m wearing a
cruise ship. I find another clerk and ask for a size 11. He disappears with a
whoosh behind the swinging door and reappears with a size 11. They’re a tad too
big, but I prefer that to a snug fit because my feet swell when I run. Half of
my toenails are black. It’s easier to adjust to a shoe that is a tad too big
than a shoe that is too tight.
On our way back to our
car, R tells me that she spotted a couple of tweakers enter the store and ask
where the golf putters were kept. I just got a glimpse of a scrawny old guy
with a lot of white hair leaping out of the universe of his head who reminded
me of the Ozark hillbillies cartoonist Al Capp used to draw for the Sunday
comics, a series called L’il Abner. Daisie
Mae Yokum, who was always scantily clad in a polka-dot peasant blouse and a
cropped skirt, was a voluptuous knockout. She was madly in love with L’il
Abner, who did everything he could to avoid her romantic advances and remain
single. Oh how I envied L’il Abner. R’s theory about the tweakers is that once
they lose themselves in the golf section they’ll find something to shoplift to
sell later for drugs. Considering how few employees were available for help, my
guess is that they’ll have a fairly easy time lifting flashlights and Sherpa
boots. Unless, of course, they’re on the level and wandered out of a parallel
universe of Sunday comics to go shopping for golf putters. I’ve learned over
time not to invest too heavily in any of my judgments. I’d make a terrible
security guard. But in this instance I’d lean toward R’s assessment.
Shoplifting has been on
the rise in Seattle, which isn’t surprising, considering the astronomical
increase in rents and the consequent rise in homelessness. Seattle ranks number
6 among U.S. cities for property crime. Income inequality in Seattle is
pharaonic. Despair hangs in the air like a listless cloud of methane while IT
workers stroll desultorily from their podments in glitzy glass and steel South
Lake Union to a cubicle at Facebook or Amazon or Google.
After dinner and a movie
(Gravity, with Sandra Bullock, one of
our favorites) I watch a short video on YouTube in which Sam Mitchell from
Austin, Texas interviews writer James Howard Kunstler. They share a couch in
Kunstler’s living room in upstate New York, Kunstler in a pair of shorts,
Mitchell in a colorful shirt and bulky cargo pants, his little dog Sancho
cozily ensconced between them. Kunstler describes how the Internet has decimated
the profession of journalism. Most things on the internet are free. No one pays
more for writing, be it journalism, fiction, book reviews, movies reviews,
music reviews, travelogues or articles on art and history. He once received
advances for as much as $250,000 which provided him with a living so that he
could pursue his career of writing. He could travel, do research, and eat.
Unless you’re a celebrity or a former politician on the lecture circuit, the
days of getting paid for one’s writing are over. This partly explains why the
writing on the Internet is generally pretty lousy, fraught with shallow, poorly
elaborated ideas, bad grammar and misspelled words. It’s a language junkyard.
And while it’s evident that the Internet and digitalized media has played a
pivotal role in this train-wreck, the neoliberal assault on education has also
been a powerfully erosive force. It’s rare to find a capable, enthusiastic
reader anymore. In a culture incapable of critical thinking and deep
reflection, writing has ceased to have any value. You could probably rob a bank
by threatening to read a passage from Proust.
The following day, I take
my new shoes for a maiden voyage, a short, three-mile run around the top of
Queen Anne hill. The shoes feel clunky and there’s a lot of margin between my
feet and the interior of the shoe. I may have gone a tad too big. But I can
always wear an extra pair of socks to get a snugger fit. And my feet do swell
during the run. What feels oddest about the shoes are the heels; they’re very
pronounced. The shoes have a very high stern. This feels good. I’m getting the
proper support for that quirkiness in my anatomy, that tendency to pronate and
come down hard on my heel. But for a while, it’s going to feel like I’ve got a
pair of Spanish galleons on my feet.
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