Pop Culture Buzz

Journey’s Shoe Retailer and Converse Shoes have teamed up to create a new line of shoes inspired by some of the best classic rock bands ever! Below is a short story written by Pop Culture Buzz fan Claudia Pierce describing the rock n’ roll marriage of the classic Converse shoe and some of the best music ever recorded!

Grateful Dead, Black Sabbath – in Journeys stores and Journeys.com now
The Doors – November 2008
The Who – January 2009
Ozzy – February 2009
Pink Floyd – March 2009

CLICK HERE TO VISIT JOURNEY’S SHOES AND LOOK AT THE NEW CLASSIC ROCK N ROLL CONVERSE LINE!

“ODE TO CONVERSE” BY CLAUDIA PIERCE

It just so happens that “Classic Rock” and Converse sneakers came into my life on the same day. In retrospect, it’s hard to say whether the shoes started me on a new path of tastes, or if the two just happened to collide into a fabulous, ‘oops-i-tripped-and-dunked-my-chocolate-in-your-peanut-butter’-esque, accidental discovery of two random objects that are surprisingly complementary. Either way, it felt rather serendipitous and both the shoes and the music have stayed with me ever since.

I was 10 years old. It was my last week of summer and my mom had taken me school shopping at the local mall. It was then that I saw them in the window –high-top, black, Converse Chuck Taylor basketball shoes. I’d seen them before, but these were different. These were black on the outside, and hot pink on the inside. They were made a little higher so that you could flip the high-top part down and have hot pink ankles over black shoes. They were the coolest things I’d ever seen, and as I suctioned myself to the shoe store window staring in at them, I was certain that I would be transformed into someone equally cool if I could just have them. I begged my mother into buying them for me. Keep in mind that this was a hard sell -we had come looking for pants. She didn’t want to hear about anything but pants. She was in affordable, practical pants mode and had pants on the brain. I managed to briefly turn her attention to the shoes, but then it became a matter of convincing her that I needed shoes just as badly as these pants she was harping on. That didn’t work, so I had to resort to negotiating. Promising more than I could ever give, in a style reserved for election year politicians and a coveting child, I swore away half of my youth in chores to get those shoes. THEN I had to vow to keep them clean if she please, please, PLEASE let me wear them out of the store. She did. In that singular moment, strutting out of the Kinney’s in my Converse flipdown high tops, I was cooler beyond my wildest dreams.

While watching tv later that same afternoon, a commercial came on for some record collection. It was one of those deals where they have a huge mix of some genre on an 8-record package and you could order now and have rush delivery to start listening right away! Being that I’d spent half of my summer in front of the television, I had seen this commercial many times over. I had learned to block it out and it became the background of my daily life. However, this day was different. I was sitting back, taking the opportunity to admire my shoes during the commercial break, and that’s when I heard the television emit a soulful croon. What was that voice? It was so smooth, and cool, and laid back, and bluesy. I looked up from my shoes and saw that it was the ad for some classic rock hits collection. According to the highlighted name scrolling across the screen, I was listening to a 20-second clip of a ‘greatest hit’ by some band called “the Doors”. I’d seen this same ad all summer long, but for the first time ever, I heard the songs that day. I was blocking it out as few as 24 hours earlier, but now, in my black and pink flip-down converse, I suddenly got it.

Somewhat possessed, swept up in the moment and in my discovery, I jumped to my feet and started dancing to the music. Feeling especially ‘rock and roll’, and looking for any opportunity to showcase my shoes, I put one foot up on the coffee table, rock star style, and began playing air guitar while Jim crooned about waking up this morning and getting himself a beer. I didn’t know who these doors people were, but the funky organ and guitar with a soulful mating call of the siren Morrison layered over it was almost more than I could bear in that moment. I wanted to know them. I wanted to be him. I wanted to listen to this music endlessly, while dancing to it in the only shoes hip enough to warrant doing so -my brand new Converse. I recall thinking that they should stop being marketed as ‘basketball shoes’, as they would be better categorized as “jumping-off-your-bed-like-a-flippin’-rock-star” shoes. I made a mental note that I would write the company someday and inform them of this, when I was older, of course, and stood a better chance of having my idea taken seriously –but I digress… Though I wasn’t certain how, I felt that there was a connection here. I felt as though I had discovered a portal to another dimension in the simple combination of rubber-soled, canvas shoes and hippy rock of the 60s and 70s. I attempted to share this information with my family, and with my friends, but no one seemed to get it. All the same, I knew that I had seen the light in some way. I had felt something that could not be un-felt. I had a new love and appreciation for this music, this era, these shoes; I was forever changed.

Thus started the trend. I eventually reached a point where I was buying my own converse in a variety of styles and colors, and I was listening to my own copy of Morrison Hotel. As time went on, my tastes in footwear and music broadened, but Converse shoes and Classic Rock were the only two things in this world that seemingly never went out of style. Besides, it didn’t matter what band I listened to –the Doors, Pink Floyd, Ozzy or the Dead –the timeless quality of the shoes went right along with it and made me feel like more of a rock star. Jamming out in my bedroom, shaking ass at a show, or throwing elbows in a pit, my Converse fit right in and have always served me well. They’re undeniably comfortable, they go with any article of clothing, and even at their worst; grubby, full of holes, and holding on by two threads after being worn for 4 ½ years straight, something about them gives you the feeling that they look exactly as they are meant to at that particular time. And if that’s not the epitome of rock and roll, I am not sure what is….

CLICK HERE TO VISIT JOURNEY’S SHOES AND LOOK AT THE NEW CLASSIC ROCK N ROLL CONVERSE LINE!