Tretorns.

For the last three years, my casual shoe of choice has been PF Flyers. This is no longer the case.

About a month and a half ago, I saw a guy riding his bike, I was riding mine too. We were stopped at a stoplight. He was wearing these white shoes with a little 

green band. I asked him what he was wearing, he said Tretorns.

After getting into work, I looked up the brand, and ever since I've been eyeing these white shoes: model T 56.

I tried the Tretorn website and Amazon.com and they both had the shoe, just not in my size. Then I stumbled across another site, and this site did have my size!! 

But this site was JCrew.

This scared me.

Then I started picturing all these douchebag Lincoln Park fathers wearing these shoes, while wearing their dirty old college ball cap, and hanging out on Saturday afternoons at bars called, "McBarleys," or "M. Finnebeans."  

I know I know, this is totally judgmental, but it did cross my mind. It's interesting how uncool the same shoe can be based on context. I picture eight or so years ago, Keds were only worn by Jewish grandmothers in New York. Then a bunch of these sweet old ladies started dying off, and their granddaughters (still grieving), wanted to wear their nanna's shoes in honor of them---plus it seemed sort of ironic. And now you can't step into a hipster neighborhood without seeing keds on cute hipster girls. (I think the same thing happened with grandfathers and grandsons regarding the boat shoe. Probably not Jewish but rather Irish and also Cape Coddians.)

The white Tretorns (because of JCrew) I thought twice about. Then I came to the realization that I'm not a white shoe guy anyway, and I found a pair of these on Ebay (below). 

They are the Tretorn T-56 Bleka model. And I didn't realize this until I bought them, but they are really similar to Keds in this respect: The white logo is the same piece of fabric as the blue around it, and the white toe box is the same piece of fabric as the tongue of the shoe. Picture a blue pair of Keds and then dye the logo and shoe box white (does this make sense?).

There is a better picture below. I need to start wearing socks more.

These are classic, vintage shoes, and that's one of the reasons why I love them. And this last part of my blog is totally unintentional, but I just thought about it right now:

The kid on the bike....he wasn't the first person I ever saw wearing Tretorns. When I was growing up, my grandmother used to wear them while doing chores around the house.

She is still alive and doing great and not Jewish.