Tasks / Barefoot In The Head
Explore your city with bare feet.
Describe the textures, the feelings, the surprises...
Document any instances of prejudice against bare feet.
15 points suggested
1 to 10 players
0 points
Level 0
Requires BART Psychogeographical Association OR Biome
Created by Charlie Fish
0 completed :: 0 in progress
Interested in collaborating on this: (no one yet!)
this task is pretired
Comments
For about 15 years I have been doing this task. Maybe I'll submit a praxi here. I have to start documenting the prejudices.
Once, in New York, while on a subway (the 6 I believe), a man in a suit that obviously cost well over a thousand dollars put his hand on my shoulder and asked if I needed anything. He offered to drop what he was doing and buy me some shoes. Right then. I was very grateful and honored, but had to explain my whole lifestyle to him. And after a few minutes he got it and understood and shook my hand.
And last month in New Jersey, a man pulled over on the turnpike and stopped his car because he saw me walking on the side of the highway and noticed I wasn't wearing any shoes, and offered me his extra pair he had in the back seat. When I declined he offered me some of the McDonalds fries he was eating.
I rarely get kicked out of places anymore. And airport security stations love me.
So do the both of you never wear shoes? I am curious and want to know more.
Lincoln, I am happy to be reminded how many kind individuals exist in the world. Sometimes that seems all too easy to forget. If you are going to be in New Jersey again let me know, as I live right over the bridge in Delaware.
I wear sandals in places where I know going barefoot is forbidden, such as restaurants. I also put things on my feet depending on the weather - I don't go barefoot in the snow or in serious rain, or in weather below about 45 degrees. (EDIT: It's worth noting that I will put on a light jacket at warmer temperatures than it takes to get me not to be barefoot, and by the time I'm wearing socks I'll have been in a warm winter coat for a while.)
After years of regular barefootedness I find my feet are more comfortable in shoes that don't provide excessive support; the closer walking in them feels to walking barefoot, the better.
Your feet must be quite tough by now. Have you ever sustained an injury due to spending so much time barefoot?
I feel rather naive in admitting this but I really never thought about people not wearing shoes. I hurt my feet more than once as a kid while running around barefoot and in more recent years it was important for me to keep my feet in pristine condition as they were a source of income for me.
Not that this is really comparable since I don't spend considerable amounts of time barefoot, but I will have on my warmer socks and shoes long before I will have a winter coat on. I am usually the person in the room who is burning up and most likely to be seen carrying a coat instead of wearing it in cold weather.
I don't own shoes. I never ever wear shoes for any reason. This has been true for about fifteen years now. Now matter how hot or cold or snowy, I have yet to encounter a situation that would have me wear shoes. My feet are a lot tougher than the average person's.
My feet are a fair bit tougher than the average person's also - but I tip the hat I never wear to Lincoln, as his are clearly even tougher than mine. I do walk through gravel, on hot asphalt, or through woods barefoot regularly, though.
But yeah, I don't get my feet hurt by much of anything. The only reasons for putting on shoes are silly rules many establishments have, and it being too damn cold. I'm from North Carolina, where the former reason is the bigger one by far, but I spend a lot of my time these days in Minnesota, where much to my irritation it being too damn cold isn't a particularly uncommon occurrence. (Annoyingly, after spending a winter shod, my feet lose some of that valuable toughness they build up each summer, so my first barefoot walk on gravel in the spring is always a bit unpleasant.)
One of the best things about graduating from high school was finding myself at a college that didn't frown on barefoot students the way my high school did.
As for weather - if it's cold, my feet will be cold, shoes or no. I don't like having my feet cold, so I do what I can to avoid this, but under most circumstances that's not much. When the ground is enough colder than everything else for sandals to make a difference, I put them on; actual shoes are basically there for preventing frostbite and going with dress clothes.
Wow, so when did you you both stop wearing shoes and what was/is the reason?
I just really don't like wearing socks. They feel weird. That's pretty much it.
I also like the awareness of my environment that comes from feeling everything and having to be at least passively aware of where you're about to step, but that's decidedly a side effect rather than the reason for it.
Miss Informed, I came home from work one day in I think '92 or '93, and it was one of those crazy days after a crazy week with crazy deadlines and a long string of 16 to 20 hour days, and I got home, and took my shoes off, and peeled off my dirty, sweaty awful socks, and splayed my toes out and opened them up and aired them out, and thought "that is the best feeling in the world" and then a little ding went off in my head and I thought I could feel that way all of the time, I burned my shoes and never looked back. Work didn't like it at first, but I grew up in Venice, so my feet were pretty well conditioned to nakedness already, so the jump wasn't extreme. But now that it's been so long, bare feet are like shoes to me. Also, it's really remarkable how clean wet grass can get bare feet. I don't think I'm ever going back to a shod life.
I've never given much though to the imposed rules that some establishments have regarding wearing shoes. Before this conversation, if I would have seen someone out in public without shoes, I most likely would have wondered what the hell they were doing-forgetting that the norm is simply an imposed idea that was agreed upon by a few and then pushed upon the masses.
I can't imagine giving up shoes. I like them and I love, love, love high heels-so much so that despite having health issues that include vertigo and balance problems, I still insist on wearing them out from time to time. I've done a fair amount of exploring the fetishistic side of feet and have never given much thought to the naturalist perspective-it gives me much food for thought.
I have had the occasion to run in the rain barefoot and that is positively delightful!
Rain in barefeet on a warm day is one of the most delightful things there is. On a cold day, it sucks - not the raindrops themselves, but the cold ground when it's been chilly for a while does not feel so good when it's wet.
I don't know about other's habits regarding bare feet, I can only speak for myself, as I am not a part of any movement nor do I advocate or push my views, I only know that I enjoy not having anything on my feet, so I don't. There's no political statement or anything. It just makes me happy to have naked feet.
And it's much better not to have shoes on in the rain. Especially if it's cold. Feet dry much faster than socks.
This is a Level Zerø pretired task completion.
Introduction
I spent most of my childhood barefoot, in the horse-country part of Los Angeles. I was proud of the thick callouses that allowed me to walk over any terrain without discomfort. I wore shoes at school and when going into stores, but that was about it. Some time around the start of junior high-school, I forgot how much I hated shoes, or else I decided it was uncool to not wear shoes. To this day, I always take them off immediately once I get home, but I gave up on exploring the outdoors barefoot.
In fact, the idea that adults could move through the urban landscape without shoes never really occurred to me until I met Lincoln. I thought to myself, "that's a good idea. I should try that," and yet never managed to get around to doing it, until BlueberryMarscapone's pretired bonanza sent me looking through pretired tasks.
My original plan was to go shoe-less for an entire week, with only one exception. My workplace includes several areas where protective footwear is not only explicitly listed on safety policies which I've signed, but is also a really good idea. Sturdy work-boots can mean the difference between "ouch" and "that's how I lost all my toes."
I decided that I'd treat shoes in the workplace in the same way I treat safety glasses, putting them on only when there was a legitimate need for them, and leaving them off otherwise. That turned out to be a bad idea. First of all, constantly having to return to my desk to grab shoes throughout the day was a real pain. Second, after walking to work my feet were always covered in grime. That's not a problem, except that when I put on shoes my feet would sweat and the dirt would become mud. When I next took off my shoes, I'd leave muddy bare footprints across the office floor. After two days of hassle and Windex, I gave up and opted to wear shoes continuously when inside the building at work.
The Outdoors
There are one hundred kinds of concrete.
There are one thousand kinds of floor.
I had forgotten what it's like to feel the texture and temperature of the ground. It sounds melodramatic and absurd, but being barefoot makes walking along familiar paths a fascinating adventure. Every patch of earth is different, with a history and character all its own. (Who knew that Muni buses have hot spots?)
I'll be submitting a task which explores this in more detail soon, so I won't belabor the point here. But, I will say that if you haven't spent a day barefoot in years, you really ought to give it a try. It's like acquiring a new sense. Not one of the big senses, like hearing or seeing, perhaps. But it's right up there with smell.
On the first day, I simply walked to and from work and around my neighborhood, enjoying textures. Late in the evening it began to rain, which felt great.
The second day I went for a long walk, and wound up causing myself some pain. I got off the bus somewhere around Judah and 7th St. in San Francisco, made my way up to Mt. Sutro, over to Twin Peaks, west toward the Mission, and eventually back to the Transbay Bus Terminal. This included my first walk through dense foliage, which started out a bit scary, as well as a lot of interesting dirt and plant covered terrain. Everything was wonderful until I got up onto Twin Peaks, which is covered in unusually sharp gravel. For a tender, one-day-old barefoot, it was torture. For some reason I figured I'd get used to it if I just kept going, but I was wrong. I walked over both peaks and down to the observation loop, and wound up leaving my soles thoroughly tenderized.
The third day I walked several miles down to the Berkeley Marina and back. Having to gingerly favor the previous day's gravel-sores made the experience less fun than I expected. The rest of the week, I more or less just followed my normal routine, with a few additional low frequency errands thrown in so as to explore different kinds of businesses. I walk quite a bit - a couple miles on an average day - so even daily life provided quite a bit of quality time with the ground.
Now, on day 9, the Mt. Sutro injuries are now almost completely healed, and I'm starting to really enjoy textures again. I have developed a few small blisters, right behind the ball of each foot, but they haven't caused me too much trouble and seem to be disappearing. I haven't noticed a whole lot of visible thickening of my sole yet, but I'm sure that will come in time.
The Indoors, and other people.
A lifetime of "no shirt, no shoes, no service" signs left me expecting to be thrown out of businesses left and right. I prepared a score card on which I could rate every place visited with a score from 1 to 5 on barefoot acceptance, but it turned out to be totally unnecessary. Few people paid any attention to my feet.
Q: What will people think of me?Among the places I went without so much as a raised eyebrow: AC transit local and transbay buses, Muni buses and rail cars, BART, five (cheap, informal) restaurants, three coffee houses, a bar, a supermarket, a chain drugstore, a bakery, a liquor store, a book store, a movie theater, and multiple campus buildings. Even the elderly couple who got out of their luxury car at 1:30 am in the middle of a deserted campus to ask me directions to the faculty club paid not the slightest attention to my feet.
A: They won't.
On the street, only members two groups of people responded to my feet in any way: pan-handlers and elderly Asian women. The first usually pointed or made some seemingly neutral comment. The second usually offered a disapproving frown, and in one case the advice, "you should wear shoes." (Not, "why aren't you wearing shoes?")
At work, during the two days when I went shoe-less whenever possible, I did get a few questions from colleagues. They all seemed to express interest without judgment. Generally, someone would ask, "what happened ot your shoes?" I'd respond, "they're upstairs, at my desk." And that would be the end of it.
In only one business did I get any reaction at all. It was a little surprising despite the fact that I specifically decided to go there because Lincoln mentioned it: Amoeba Records, in this case the Berkeley store. I got past door security and was able to browse for about seven minutes when someone who looked and acted like a store manager came out. She seemed genuinely uncomfortable with the task, but she told me that for liability reasons store policy forbade patrons without shoes. I guess I looked sad and surprised, because she immediately offered to let me continue to shop "this time only" but warned me that I'd have to wear shoes the next time. I continued to browse for a few minutes, found an album in the clearance bin that looked appealing, purchased it, and left.
.
Closing thoughts, inconveniences, and the future.
Dropping shoes cold-turkey can be a painful experience. Were I to do it again, I'd probably ease into it by walking home from work every day barefoot for a month or two first. Now that my week is over, I'm planning to fall back to something like a quarter-time barefoot schedule, which will hopefully allow me to build up callouses painlessly. I've completely given up on being shoe-less at work. It just isn't worth the trouble.
Dirty feet aren't generally a problem. Instead of taking off my shoes when I come home, I just wash them off quickly in the bath tub, so as not to leave mud on the furniture. Being invited into other people's shoe-free homes hasn't come up yet. I'm not sure how to handle that one. I expect I'll probably just wear shoes whenever I'm likely to visit people at their homes. Those truly dedicated to the barefoot lifestyle could carry around clean slippers or paper booties, I guess.
The only unpleasant aspect of living barefoot which I haven't figured out how to deal with is the occasional need to step in yucky stuff. I understand that a well calloused sole can handle gravel, and well calloused soul can handle being kicked out of record stores. But, I find it hard to believe crossing a public restroom floor barefoot is ever going to be pleasant.
I'll continue to post updates here as this experiment develops.
This is Epic!
Everything I could have hoped for when I created LvL Ø!
So inspiring. I wish this would show up in your completed tasks list...
And how can one photo contain so much of that win?!
Loki, you are awesome. No, you are Awesome. This task has so much win in it that all of the awesome sauce is spilling all over the place.
Did you pick that album on purpose as an ode to this?
Charlie Fish-designed, Lincoln-inspired, Loki-performed tasking is right up there with the smell of the first rain of the year. Aaaaah.
"I prepared a score card on which I could rate every place visited with a score from 1 to 5 on barefoot acceptance, but it turned out to be totally unnecessary. Few people paid any attention to my feet"
There's a shocker. You're in Berkeley, California. People walk around with no clothes and no one bats an eye. Why would anyone care one way or the other?
"Why would anyone care one way or the other?"
That is kind of the same way I feel about anonymous opinions.
Right. That's why I'm not silly enough to prepare a score-card :>
Look you two, this will-they-won't-they-moonlighting nonsense is getting old. Just sit down, make out, get over it, and give the rest of us a break. It's not like we can't tell. Gosh!
Heh. I do this task every day.
As for prejudice - mostly weird looks, from those that even notice. But I did once get kicked out of a mall.