Buying shoes was much harder than i feel it should be

Athletic shoes are manufactured primarily in South-East Asia. I have never understood why it is that something that has a very low logistical cost would actually be more expensive here than on the other side of the planet. It doesn't make sense but believe me, that is the case.

Therefore I decided to pick up some trainers when i was back in the States. Unfortunately, the process was not as simple as I had hoped because there are a million different kinds of shoes all claiming this technology and that, none of which I either understand nor believe. I remembered in the past that a very wealthy person I know bought me a pair of shes called Nike Free Rn and it had new technology that I am not going to try to explain but apparently it makes the shoes cost 3x as much.

Rather than having a single sole the bottom of the shoe is separated into 50 different parts. I can only presume this is to enable better flexibility and this somehow makes you perform better. While I tried really hard to not be ungrateful, these shoes were almost completely useless anywhere than a perfectly clean surface and Thailand doesn't have very many of those.

Every time I wore these shoes anywhere I came back with all manor of crud stuck between the various gaps in the bottom of the shoe especially if i went anywhere in nature.

---

Returning to the States gave me the opportunity to go to a store I used to really enjoy called Shoe Carnival. ()

This monstrosity has 400,000 pairs of shoes all under one roof and you can try any of them on before deciding what to buy. At first I thought this was going to be fun way to get some new shoes but it was really just overwhelming as there were entirely too many options. Being faced with this conundrum I narrowed it down to New Balance because I had fond memories of a pair I bought like 20 years ago. Then the next problem began

I guess it must be in fashion but people are wearing some crazy colors now and it was difficult to find a pair that didn't have some sort of glowing neon color mixed in the color paradigm.

is it a pair of shoes or a kid's birthday cake, i can't tell

Basically I would never wear anything that looks like that and I finally found a pair of trainers that was exactly what I was looking for. A single sole, no crazy colors, comfortable, and very similar to the shoe I had 20 years ago. It was actually the ONLY shoe in the store that met the criteria that I wanted.

Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the New Balance MT-410, which is an entirely too long name for a shoe. Were there 409 previous models? does it go up in increments of 10? Oh well i guess it doesn't matter. I was finally excited and at $50 it was one of the better values in the entire store.

Of course they didn't have my size. Thank goodness for Amazon I guess because I got them in the end thanks to a family member who has a "Prime" membership and for $10 less than Shoe Carnival.

On another note I think the days of Shoe Carnival and really anything else like it will be facing end days soon. It doesn't seem like a very viable business model and there was almost no one in the store despite it being Sunday in Christmas shopping season.