November 2, 2005
Croc

It’s a croc.  Or should I say a pair of Crocs.  What, you don’t know from zip about Crocs?  Well join the club, but I’m learning.  Crocs, a really ugly clog type plastic shoe that comes in colors usually found in popsicles, are everywhere. 

You don’t think so?  Hey when everyone from my 5-year-old grandson to the neighborhood banker wears Crocs in public, it’s a full-blown shoe craze.   

The first time I witnessed a pair of Crocs up close and personal they adorned the feet of Jude, our San Francisco friend.  A couple of summers back, she was spending a few months in Boulder on a business consulting assignment.  Being in the neighborhood, relatively speaking, Jan and I met her for dinner in Denver.  Jude arrived wearing the normal business type suit attire one expects from a high level professional but on her feet were a pair of shocking pink plastic clogs.  “Is this the latest in San Francisco chic?” I asked.  “Oh no” she replied, “They’re called Crocs and come from a company in Niwot. It’s a Colorado thing”.    

I didn’t think much more about it, not that one can exactly ignore dining with a lady wearing plastic flamingo colored gunboats on her feet even if she is from San Francisco, but two years later Croc’s are sold everywhere from mall kiosks to shoe stores, bike shops to the convenience store where you buy gasoline.  Usually priced below thirty bucks, the whole world is proclaiming how comfortable they feel in these lime, purple, chocolate and canary yellow bulbous boat shoes. 

Not that shoe fads are anything new to our land.  Nehru jackets and pet rocks to the contrary, my lifetime has seen more “gotta have it” craziness over shoes than any other object of affection including hula hoops and super balls. 

Remember the 70’s and Earth Shoes with their negative heel?  Then there were the teen-age boys of the 90’s and their passion for Air Jordans.  We sandal fanatics have gone through Birkenstocks, Tevas and Chaco’s in just the last decade.  Sex In the City made Manolo Blahnik’s female footwear incredibly popular.  While Croc’s styling has been said to make the wearer appear as having escaped from a mental institution, anyone standing in line to pay almost $700 for a pair of Manolo’s is, in one man’s opinion, certifiably crazy. 

Back in the eighties, Grand Junction had it’s own shoe mania, Chippewa’s.  Called “Chips” by the high and middle school set, “Chips” and Levi 501’s were the style du jour in Grand Valley schools.  Our two oldest split a pair back in their days at West Middle School and every morning at the Maynard’s began with an argument over whose turn it was to wear the “Chips”.  Local lore claims ESPN’s Steve Cyphers started the “Chips” craze in his Tiger High School days but that may be rumor. What is true were students from our valley walking across campus in  “Chips” being greeted “Hi Grand Junction” by complete strangers in Ft. Collins, Boulder and Greeley as the shoe was so closely associated with our city.  Alas, tastes change and that particular style of Chippewa is no longer available. 

And the end may be in sight for Crocs.  True, according to Westword, sales of Crocs have grown from an estimated 76,000 in 2003 to over 250,000 pair a month today causing the company to plan an IPO.  But the same article also said the comfort of Croc’s has been discovered by the “senior” set.  And that might mean we’ll do for Crocs what we did for Plymouth and Oldsmobile.