My Busy Chattanooga Saturday: The Threequel!

After leaving the book reading at ChattaCon (or as my Dad thinks it should have been called, ComicNooga) I still had a few hours to kill (or so I thought). As I mentioned in part two of this tale, I headed back toward McKay's Bookstore from the Con, but I didn't actually head back to McKay's. As I had left the bookstore earlier that morning I spotted a Steve and Barry's location on the other side of the Interstate.

I had heard about these guys when looking for the much-hyped Starbury athletic shoe, the worlds first $15 Athletic Shoe, designed for, endorsed by, and even worn on the court by NBA Basketball Player, Stephon Marbury of the New York Knicks. For more about the Starbury, you can check out this article: Unfortunately, when I had been doing the looking, the nearest Steve and Barry's location was in Atlanta, the trip to which, given the gas prices at the time, might well have tripled the price of the shoe. So, excited to see an outlet in my neck of the woods, I popped in to check out the $15 footwear.

Fifteen dollars is an absurdly inexpensive price for quality athletic shoes, and it just so happened to be the amount I had been paid just a couple of hours before for my box of unwanted paperbacks and old DVD's. So imagine my surprise, my shock, even, when I walked in to the outer vestibule to be greeted with 2 large banners declaring "Winter Liquidation: Everything In The Store $8.98"!!

I looked immediately for the asterisk.

I could find no asterisk.

I still assumed that shoes were excluded. After all, every sale we ever had back when I worked in a retail clothing store always excluded shoes. But then again, we always had an asterisk, too.

I found the Starbury shoe Aisle, and sure enough, the signage proclaimed that the laughably low price of $8.98 applied to ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING in the store.* I still wondered where the catch was. The catch was, they had every style available in sizes 12, 13,14, and 15. I usually take about an 8-1/2, but have been known to wear anything from a 9-1/2 down to a 7. Yeah, I have little girl feet. You want to make somethin' of it?

I once, while working as a camp counselor, offered my extra pair of shoes to a 5th-grader who had for gotten to bring along "creek-stomping" shoes and was understandably reluctant to drag his new, $100-plus, Air Force Ones or Air Jordans, or whatever they were, through a mile and a half of Tennessee creek bed. The 5th grader could not wear my shoes. My shoes were too small. One of the other kids had a pair large enough for him.

Anyway, after scouring the racks for shoes in the Sub-sasquatchian sizes (say that three times fast!), I found a pair that fit pretty well. I dropped a $10 bill for them, and got back change. They survived a hectic night of waiting tables, and as of this morning, they have passed the Gas station Stand-behind-a-counter-all-night test, too. If you follow the S&B link above to go look at the shoes, I got the low-top Starbury II, in black. It was also available in bright blue, and even brighter orange, but I already have a perfectly good pair of clown shoes.

*Seriously. Everything. I just wanted to throw in an asterisk**

**Actually, I didn't look at everything in the store, so I can't swear that an exception didn't exist somewhere, just to make a liar out of me. Also, I will assume that cash registers, store lighting fixtures, and most of the employees were not available for this price. They should have had an asterisk, after all.