Manolo says, from the Manolo’s friends at Boing Boing come news of the discovery of the world’s oldest kicks!

Gary Pifer a vintage clothing dealer found the 116 year old sneakers while combing through picked over items, that were contained within a victorian era trunk. “As I arrived late, I was told that all the good stuff was gone”, said Mr. Pifer.

He paid 50 cents for the brown high top canvas sneakers made by the Colchester Rubber Company. Later that night, Mr. Pifer was shocked to discover, during an internet search, that the brand went out of business in 1893.

“In a instant, I knew this discovery would be re-writing basketball and sneaker history, as these sneakers are 25 years older than the 1917 Converse All-Stars”, added Pifer. The Colchester Rubber Co. was located in Colchester, Connecticut and was in business from 1888 to 1893.

Naturally, this being the Age of Commerce, Mr. Pifer, who discovered the shoes in 2004, has already set up the company to market reproductions of these marvelous shoes.

And, the Manolo has to say, he would happily wear these shoes.

Dear Manolo

I recently graduated and started a new job as a research chemist. This means long hours on my feet in the lab, and close-toed shoes in the summertime!. Can you recommend any close-toed shoes that are comfortable, fashionable, *and* affordable? It seems an impossible combination.

Genna

Manolo says, since the time of the famously maladapted and nerdy Isaac Newton, scientists have been the modern priestly class, intermediaries between our superstitious world of ignorance and their logical world of higher knowledge, engaged in arcane rites that are as incomprehensible to us lay people as the differences between homoousios and homoiousios were to the medieval serfs.

And as members of this modern priesthood–as guileless and unworldly in its way as the Benedictine order–scientists are not expected to be overly concerned about the matters of this world. They have bigger fish to dissect.

Unfortunately, unlike the medieval monks, the modern scientists must pick out their own clothing, the practice that has resulted, more or less, in disaster. And thus one cannot help but notice that most scientists fall somewhere between the Nutty Professor and Steve Urkel on the continuum of fashion.

Thank heavens for the lab coat!

Look, here is the Make the Braid from Kenneth Cole New York. The cute loaferish shoe that will look good as you unlock the secrets of the universe. And it is on the sale!

Manolo answers, it is the Kiki Dunst!

Congratulations to the Manolo’s internet friend Leah who was the first to correctly identify this personage of note.

Manolo says, pass the budget? It looks as if the Governator is attempting to pass the kidney stone.

Maolo asks, whose shoes?

If the sight of this solidly-built middle-aged man getting his funk on does not bring the smile to your face, you are perhaps without hope.

There is more below the jump.

Super fantastic!

To make the matters worse, this winter was not kind to your backside, to say nothing about your belly-side, and your various other jiggly-bits which will soon be swaying gently in the seaside breeze.

And so, with great haste you log onto the websites of various on-line retailers and look at one-piece tank suits with special supportive panels and Spanx-like hidden trussing. After 47 minutes of searching (all on company time) you give up the search when you realize that the bathing suits are not usually something that can be reliably purchased on-line, that is, unless of the course, you are one of those women who is comfortable having the bottom part of the suit ride up into the crotch, exposing your lack of Brazilian waxification (strangely, this population is not inconsiderable).

That is when you decide that the better course of action will be to fake the big emergency tomorrow afternoon, so that you can rush out of the office and down to the mall.

This decision, one of life’s forgivable little white lies, causes you to feel both relieved and exceedingly guilty. You are punctilious about such misconduct. It is one thing to waste the stray hour reading the Celebitchy and the Fug Girls on company time, but another entirely to carefully plan to mislead so as to be able to go shopping on office time.

In point of fact, this planned infraction leaves you feeling so guilty that must go to your happy place, to the Manolo’s humble Shoe Blog, where you will be able to look at beautiful shoes, thus soothing your jingly-jangly nerves.

Ayyyyy! You just realized that you are still as white as the ghost, and there’s no time for the tanning booth!

Manolo take me away!

Look, here are the beautiful low-wedge heeled sandals from Lilly Pulitzer!

Feel better now?