Shoes and other bits

August 27, 2005

I had been thinking about getting a proper dance shoes for some time now and finally made the plunge. I had done some readings on this including humorous Steve 'SalsaDoc' Wasserman, and other informative sites in New York, Boston, Vancouver (the Vancouver site deals primarily with Tango and recommends same shoes for Tango and Salsa, which I don't completely trust) as well as creative sites for cheap dance shoes (mirror site here). Freed of London, which does not sell directly to individual buyers, is a well-recommended brand and plethora of stores in London exist. However all of these stores seemed far away and tricky to get to during their opening hours for me. After some deliberation, I decided to try a ballroom dance shoes company called Supadance, which seemed to have seal of approval from a salsa-dedicated website. With this company, I could buy a replacement shoes using internet (once I settled on my shoe size) and their headquarters (in Epping, IG9 5BA, UK - use map by google) was comparatively easier to get to by car.

It is recommended that you get a fairly tight fitting (not uncomfortable though) shoes. It made me realize a few things including - I've been wearing a very loose pair of shoes (Ecco European size 42, which is roughly equivalent to USA size 9 (I usually wear 8 1/2 USA, but I had found a 41 Ecco dress shoes I bought a while ago to be too uncomfortable) and UK size 8 according to Supadance size converter. I ended up buying a UK size 6 1/2 mens standard ballroom shoes (style 9000 or Europa), which fit quite snuggly. By the way, this was a rare instance where buying in UK was cheaper than buying the same item in USA. I avoided patent leather shoes for too-glossy look and potential safety issues and went with rounded-toes rather than pointed toes, which seem to squeeze my toes a little. Anyhow, just finding the right size alone made today's drive completely worthwhile. It's clear that making turns will be smoother with these shoes.

Of course, now I'm going to have to worry about having more than one pair of shoes about me when going dancing, not getting these shoes wet, etc. These shoes are also tiny!! I'm going to lose at least one centimeter of height, and I many need to worry about my pants hitting the ground when wearing these ballroom shoes. I guess you win some and lose some.