Civil Obedience
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Our quaint, cozy little village of Carmel Valley is fortunate to have a quaint, cozy little marketplace specifically for the locals:
Along with just about everyone else in town, our family is dependent on this place; if we can’t shop here, the nearest big grocery store is about a 15-minute drive from home. The market is perfect for grabbing a loaf of bread to go with dinner on the way home from work, or for those times when you get halfway through the breakfast recipe before realizing that you’re out of buttermilk.
The owner and employees are about as nice as you’ll ever encounter, and they get along with everyone in our little community. Like any long-term relationship, the goodwill between store and community has been tested at times – especially during one rocky period several years ago when the store was sold to out-of-towners who tried to turn it into an upscale gourmet boutique. They did away with the coin-operated kiddie rides out front, and even got rid of the cigar store Indian that represented everything rustic and quirky about our little town.
They were aiming for sophistication – and predictably, our little village revolted. Locals took their business down the road to the big grocery store, and the Carmel Valley Market eventually ran into hard times. The new owners stopped paying their mortgage, and ultimately closed the store down entirely before hightailing it away from our village and leaving everyone else to pick up the pieces.
Thankfully, new local owners stepped in to re-remodel the store back to the small town fixture everybody loved. They returned the inventory to regular fare, and returned the Indian out front. The return to “old management” even included the original owner, well into his 80s by now, who came back to work in the produce department and serves as the de facto goodwill ambassador for the shop.
Today, the community and the shop are friends again, and that goes for me and my family as well. There’s only one thing I find depressing and objectionable about the market – one that hits me in the face every time I walk through the door.
To save you the trouble of enlarging, I’ve cropped the sign on the door here:
It’s your fairly classic No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service sign, complete with a reference to a health department standard which doesn’t exist. There’s also a mention of safety, on the off chance that I’d cut my foot on a stray tortilla chip and decide to sue them; I guess we can blame the lawyers for that one. But considering that our village and the neighboring communities have one of the highest per capita rates of tie-dyed California hippies anywhere outside of Berkeley or Haight-Ashbury, such a rule runs completely against the communal goodwill that the market worked so hard to re-establish.
To many barefoot advocates, such a sign is offensive, suggesting an underlying premise that having naked feet is somehow offensive. For others, a sign like this is a call to arms (or, um ... legs, or feet - something like that), triggering an immediate effort to reverse the policy through educating the ownership and dispelling commonly held misconceptions about public barefooted-ness. The most hardcore crusaders will argue that the sign is nothing short of discrimination, and campaign to overcome such injustice through public relations or boycott attempts.
As for me, here’s what I do: absolutely nothing.
I don’t feel offended by the sign, I’ve never asked the owner to justify it, and I don’t deliberately take my business elsewhere. Rather, I keep a thin foot cover – typically a pair of Sockwas – under my car seat for anytime I have to throw something on my feet to comply with the rules of the house. And when I return to my car, I slip them off and continue driving barefoot (which also isn’t illegal, despite what you might hear).
In the grand scheme of things, the footwear policy of a small village market isn’t something that will keep me awake at night. I’m not opposed to picking some battles here and there – for example, if my daughter gets kicked out of P.E. class for wearing VivoBarefoots – but this particular cause isn’t a war I feel compelled to fight. It’s not a major inconvenience to slip something on my feet, and I like the market too much to go stirring up any sort of controversy. If that makes me a sellout to my fellow barefoot brethren, so be it.
If this was your neighborhood, what would you do? How about if this was your market – would you let people walk around barefoot? If so, is there a difference between barefoot and bare-chested? I think I’d be a lot more repulsed by some big fat pasty hairy dude walking around shirtless than by a granola-looking dude with grungy feet. Do you consider this a cause worth getting worked up about? I may not be stirring up controversy (at least, not intentionally), but I’m curious to hear what you think in the comments below.
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8 comments:
I was almost having the same conversation with my wife the other day. We live in Tucson AZ and outside it was around 106 i had a pair of Sanuk sandals on and when we went inside a grocery store I slipped them off to enjoy the icy cold and smooth concrete. She was immediately embarassed and got upset for me walking around barefoot. I guess it is still too weird for her and others to see someone walking around barefoot and not swimming. Oh well
In your situation i dont think that I would cause waves either, just let it be
Donald,
It is hard not to cause waves, but in this case building a relationship with the owners is the only way to go. I live in Michigan, where it is socially okay to go barefoot- NEVER. Frustration has lead to waves, but then social responsibility steps in.
Picking your battles saves time and energy. Your's is best writing cool posts on great shoes that help peoples feet.
Thanks for your all the time you spend writing for us.
it's funny you mention this because i was just having this conversation on saturday with some friends. my hypothesis is that the bottoms of shoes are dirtier than the bottoms of feet.
i know when i'm barefooted i watch where i'm stepping and avoid things that might be overly dirty, bacterial laden, etc. but in shoes, i'll stomp right through whatever is in my path.
at the same time, i think your stance on civil obedience in this case is wise. the older i get, the more grace i seem to acquire. waves, more often then not, are just for waves sake.
I'd say for someplace like this market where you go often and have a rapport with the folks inside, it's worth pushing a bit.
If there's no other way to start the conversation, I might try just going in there barefoot, armed with all sorts of appealing reasoning like "there in fact is no health code about bare feet" "how are my feet dirtier than your shoes?" and "so if I wore flip-flops that still show off my feet, it's OK?"
For most places, I'm with you. Easy enough to throw on some minimal sandals for 5 minutes in the store.
Great article and interesting dilemma. I feel I'd probably do the same as you (actually, I *do* the same but with some Luna Sandals). Still, I sometimes think I should say more.
Jeff, I have the same discussion frequently. However, more than just watching where I step, I tell people that I scrub my feet every day - frequently multiple times. When was the last time they scrubbed their shoes (or worse, their shoelaces)?
well, here's the deal with me and my family. we go barefoot most of the time, except for going to stores and not when the sidewalk is 140 degrees - we live in North Central Az and it is pretty d--- hot for several months each year. As I don't go to any malls, and do not "shop" as a hobby like some folks, I don't have a problem with being shod for going to get groceries or something from Home Depot, etc. I think the Japanese have things organized pretty well - leave your street shoes on the shelf and put on some socks for padding around inside if it's a public place and there's some concern for what might stick to your or your kid's skin. No, I don't know if that is exactly what the Japanese do but my dad taught me that 40 years ago and I've always gone with it. So, there's my .02¢ and it's subject to change in a few minutes. p.s. hi to all you other barefoots.
I'd respect the owner's wishes. It's their store. And it's not like they are turning away people because of their race or ethnicity, which can't be changed. Now that's a battle worth waging. Footwear preferences, not so much.
I have no idea what the real justification is, but if I owned or managed a store, I would be concerned about lawsuits... and not about tortilla chips. In a supermarket, jars and bottles are dropped and broken practically daily. And despite their best efforts, it is virtually impossible to clean up 100% of the tiny shards of glass at your first pass at cleaning up. I dropped a pyrex baking dish in my kitchen over a month ago, and it took 3 or 4 thorough cleanings of the floor over a week's time before I could safely walk barefoot in my own kitchen. (and 3-4 weeks later, I still found tiny slivers of glass)
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