Rock on Converse All Stars!!

         I remember my first pair of Chucks... yes I do.  I was in fourth grade, I don't remember why I so wanted those canvas shoes, but I remember my first pair of Chucks...  What drew me to them? No idea... I didn't know what they were really... I didn't know about the Ramones or Punk Rock, or anything... I'd seen old 50's basketball movies, but that wasn't it... I have no idea why I wanted those shoes, but I remember getting them and I remember where I got them from... Super Shoes out on the Carlisle Pike, in Mechanicsburg Pa... The stores still there, it's totally different now but the fact that it still remains is pretty amazing... Decibels the club was right behind it and that didn't last, but Super Shoes is still there... Back then they didn't have it laid out like a shoe store, with shelves and what not, no the shoes were just in big bins that ran the length of the building, they didn't even come in boxes. They were tied together by the shoelaces or later on the little plastic do-hickey that you could never break. That's where I got my Chucks, back then they were the cheapest shoe you could get, so much so that I got picked on relentlessly the first time I wore them to school, they were poor people’s shoes, and I was a poor person.  Back then it was all about the two-hundred dollar shoes, the Air Jordan’s and if you had cheap fucking Kmart shoes or worse, Super Shoes shoes... well you know how cruel kids can be, yeah well me too I got the brunt of it.... But still I persisted I wore my blue high tops with pride through the ridicule, through the horrible painful blisters I got on my heels because I wasn't used to wearing high tops... I wore those shoes till they fell apart, which is of course when All Stars become the most comfortable.  Since that first pair of All Stars I've probably owned twenty or twenty-five pairs of All Stars, not including the number of pairs of One Stars I owned... I've owned and worn different shoes throughout my life but I always come back to Chuck Taylor All Stars, low tops, high tops, I’ve always had a pair or two or four hiding in my closet... from the pairs I bought brand new, to the ones I bought at thrift stores and drew all over or painted silver while stoned, worn out, blown out, I never got rid of them... Then in high school when Snoop and Dre blew up, and were wearing All Stars in there videos and all the douchebag wannabe hip hoppers started wearing them I got a chuckle out of it. They were wearing poor people shoes... Now I'm thirty-one and all I wear are All Stars, sure I have the flattest feet in the world from twenty years of wearing shoes with no arch support, but hey sacrifices have to be made right... The only thing that sucks is now they're 45 dollars a pop when I used to get two pairs for twenty back at the Super Shoes outlet... and now they made overseas like Levi's and Fender's and Budweiser... I suppose when I die and they stretch me out, I'll be buried in Chuck's, I can't see being buried in anything other shoe... Till next time, catch ya' on the flipside...