No Country for Half-Size Sneakers
Disposable cool on consumerism's farthest shore
You can’t buy half-size sneakers in New Zealand.
Say it louder for the kids in back: A whole country with No. Half-Sized. Sneakers.
Our last trip to the States I dropped this fun fact on friends and relations. Men shrugged—we’re cowboys—but a cold doubt flickered in their eyes. The stylish Texan women made their horror plain: How can you LIVE?
We get by, I said, and spat in the dirt.
And now, both here and there, we’re getting by without Disney+.
There are the limits the market places on your shopping. New Zealand is far away, with more hooves than feet. You cannot buy half-size Vans or Converse here. The makers won’t ship ‘em, and the retailers won’t stock ‘em. No half-size Nike Dunks or Adidas Sambas either. You can usually get a full range of the sporty stuff—running shoes, hiking boots, etc.—and some brands do half sizes on their own websites. New Zealand has no Amazon. Australia does but it’s a mixed bag and pricey to ship. A lifelong 10.5 Vans man like me is out of luck.
Then there are the limits on shopping you place on yourself. We’ve canceled our Disney+ subscription, though in truth it was only half a political gesture. We were growing tired of buying it every month, and their craven cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel just gave us the nudge. I’m glad to see him back, and watch the once-mighty Disney bend and scrape for our forgiveness, but I don’t feel inclined to return. I don’t think we’re alone in this. Buying stuff takes energy. Subscriptions—buying something over and over and over again—are their own special drag on the soul. Let it go, the princess sang. Let it go.
Feels good, not buying so much stuff. But I don’t always know what to cut.
As it happens, one of Disney’s most famous movies is a fable about cool shoes that fit. Cinderella only gets to go to the ball because she’s got a fairy godmother to hook her up with dope kicks. At party’s end she leaves one behind as a calling card. When the lovestruck Prince sets out to find her again, he seeks not her face, her voice, her intellect, or her charm. Instead he tests every women in his kingdom to see if their bodies match a magical consumer object. The lesson is clear: You ain’t got the shoes, you ain’t shit.
Cinderella debuted in 1950 and was a massive hit, dragging a stalled Disney out of debt and minting the princess formula that would drive its conquest of American culture. That year, or thereabouts, also marked the beginning twitches of the Great Acceleration, an unprecedented explosion in human economic activity that would soon see the whole world switch from cobbled leather to rubber soles.
America switched to sneakers, and grew to worship our brands as national icons. As a boy I plastered my bedroom walls in Nike ads torn out of Sports Illustrated. Poems, they were. Incantations to summon the individual glory buried within. Just Do It.
New Zealand switched to sneakers, too. But they’re trainers here, that hopelessly uncool word. Trainers are ubiquitous here—mostly American brands, but also loads of Asics from Japan—but far from sacred. Roadside statues are raised instead to gumboots and jandals. Everyman shoes, indifferently sized. Zero flash. Better in mud.
I have my own Cinderella story here. To my first Kiwi wedding I wore a blue suit with a pair of black Vans Old Skools, size 11’s and fresh out of the box.
Now the suit-and-sneakers look ain’t hardly a thing in America anymore. Groomsmen in matching Chucks have been basic American wedding fare for decades. The dapper New Zealand MP Rawiri Waititi scandalized his dreary conservative colleagues by rocking a mint pair of Jordans in Parliament; Republicans and Democrats alike have sported sneakers in the Oval Office and nobody bats an eye.
But let’s run the logic here. I didn’t have the cash to buy leather dress shoes, so my glass slippers were Vans for less than one-third the price. You can only pair casual sneaks with a wedding suit if they’re factory clean: that’s the rule. I am cool right now, here, tonight! I get cooler as I work ‘em on the dance floor, even cooler as I thrash ‘em in the gutter as we stagger to the after party! Tomorrow the squares will polish their dress shoes, but mine will die and rise again as daily-wears. American cool is disposable, because an American can always buy more.
The morning of the wedding I thought about none of this. My stupid NZ Vans were a half size too big! I walked laps of the house in worry. The damn things looked and felt like Interislander ferries on my feet! Nobody can tell, Jenny said. Nobody cares.
People do care, though. I care! I see Kiwis walking around in Chucks a half-size too big all the time. The toes curl up like elven boots.
You can do better, I whisper to them in the grocery store, on the train, at the zoo. You should be able to buy the things that best express your truest self.
I really, really liked Andor. I’ll have to pay Disney+ again one day to show it to my kids.
In a just world, I suppose, your true self shouldn’t have to buy shit.
I want less.
I want to want less, anyhow.
I want my dear America to want less.
I want New Zealand to get some shoes that fit.
What’s enough? I once stopped at a Greytown crosswalk to let a family of five go by in the rain. Mother, Father, three teenage kids, all wearing the exact same black Kathmandu raincoat. Kiwis know the one. I sat in my car and watched them go. I salute you, my ducklings. But I cannot live that way.
At the actual wedding, of course, I was the only man in sneakers. The garden was a sea of Kiwi dads in buffed Chelseas and pointy Oxfords. A mate of mine gave my Vans the nod: “I had a pair of those when I was a kid.” //
As a long-time 9 & a half (UK sizing, no US upsizing here) I sympathise, particularly with a wide foot that means having to go up a size and suffer that toe curl-up. But I still remember a time, when shoe shops dotted the country, right next to butchers and fruit shops where you could get a half sizing. Bata Bullets is all I can say to any Kiwi over 40 (50?) to remind them of style and choice back then however. Locally made. Then Big Shoe kicked in (Warehouse, #1 Shoes, Rebel Sport). You could now get cheaper sneakers, in a bewildering array of styles and colours. Just not a half size. Not enough room on the ships bringing them all in. Sometimes we get more, but often end up with less, like shoes that fitted probably, brought from a store that knew its shoe game, because it was the only game they knew. I appreciate a lot of what we have now in Aotearoa, but I do sometimes miss Old Zealand, walking to town for new shoes that you knew would fit an in-betweener. I think this just turned into a lament from an early Gen Xer.
to watch Pirates of the Caribbean, you must become a pirate of the Pacific. Ride the high cyber seas, commandeer content booty.