Everyone probably knows about this but me. However just in case I’m not alone in my ignorance, there is a Virtual Shoe Museum where you can marvel at weird shoes all day long!

Check out William (Boy) Habraken‘s collection of tribal and ethnographical shoes…the largest in the world.

The Virtual Shoe Museum has a user-friendly data-base that lets you search by material (fur, feathers, plastic, wool, etc) designer, style, etc. Go have some fun!

The problem with Hipsters is that everything they love becomes kitsch. Hipsters in Williamsburg NY have so violated the neighborhood that Danny Hoch wrote a play about it.

The New Hipsters are “looking for an authentic experience.” They LOVE “authenticity.” They love to collect stuff, the older the better. Victorian, Edwardian, even old Americana will do. They love Amish shit, as you can imagine. It’s not only authentic, it’s “honest.”

The first time I happened upon a person called Hollister Hovey, I was severely traumatized. (See her living room, above.) I couldn’t even pull myself together to rant about her. It’s not PC to complain about Hollister Hovey, whose very name is intolerable. You have to gush about how chic and wonderful she is, with her eccentric collections of old leather hunting helmets, battered old luggage, vintage military crap, hatboxes, and most annoying, her taxidermy.

Taxidermy is officially kitsch, thanks to Hollister. What used to be creepy and morbidly fascinating is just crap now. There’s probably no hipster apartment anywhere that lacks a mounted animal head or at least some antlers.

Some Hipster in Brooklyn named Sean Crowley collects English and French umbrellas from the 30s and 40s.   His apartment is filled with old heraldic devices and Edwardian portraits. He really needs to learn from Hollister though, since he hasn’t managed to fill every inch of his dwelling with pretentious clutter.

Old medical crap is essential to any Hipster’s very being. Vintage anatomical posters, old dental equipment, a Hipster would kill its own grandmother to get at her vintage dentures.

I remember that someone came up with the term Bobos (short for Bourgeois Bohemians) to depict a certain brand of Hipster.   The New Hipster is different, in that instead of bragging about their Prius they brag about their stuffed flamingo.

If you can’t learn to hate them, I might have to offer a course in Remedial Hatred.   I have to master the video thing first, though.

Here is a spider web t-shirt from Urban Outfitters. If I were 20 years old, I would definitely want this shirt.

More problematic are these shoes by John Galliano. There are reduced from $850 to only $150, and they are available in my size, an enormous and crowd-pleasing size 40. The thing is, I would never wear them. I know from experience that I’d just add them to my Museum of Shoes I Can’t Walk In. On the other hand, wouldn’t they make a nice addition to the collection?

Isn’t it sad that I am mostly reacting to the original price? I want to save $700!

I read some thing at Time magazine online, about people who are trying to live with only 100 things. It’s a concept that I find very appealing and also terrifying. I probably have 100 hair products. Maybe I could throw some out, though. And then I could buy the shoes.