new shoes

It is almost time to retire my white Cartelo shoes with the red and blue stripes and the small illustrations of Beijing's famous Tiantan Park pagoda (天坛公园) on the sides. I bought those the first evening Shawna and I arrived in Suzhou after we took the speed train from Nanjing after my classes were out. We went to a shoe store and I thought for a while as to whether I wanted to pay the equivalent of ~$35 USD for a decent pair of shoes as opposed to ~$7 USD for a bootleg pair that fall apart in a matter of weeks. I decided I needed a pair that would last for some time, and I really liked the Tiantan design on them, they were pretty nifty. I typically rate shoes in my mind based on a scale of whether or not they are "nifty." This rating system came about the first time I went to China, when Alexei and I were in Century Mart in Shanghai. I bought a similar pair, white with red and blue stripes, that at the time struck a chord with me bc they looked like the cover of an Elliott Smith album entitled "Figure 8." They didn't have any other designs, but I remember thinking how nifty they were, and ever since that descriptor for worthwhile shoes has stuck.
Now I don't really like Elliott Smith so my decision to buy those shoes in Suzhou was based on entirely different values. I was wearing a horrible pair of flower shoes (bootlegged Nikes) I had bought with my friend Simon the preceding year in Beijing. Those shoes were quite miserable. I still have another pair I bought in Beijing, which in spite of inferior quality I still enjoy. They have a map all over them; the map is, of all places, belonging to a location in Florida called Carol City. Why? I don't know.
But I found a new pair of shoes I can settle for and although I am buying them on the internet, based on other buyer comments I believe they are legitimate. They are of a special edition release by Nike with horror movie themes. This particular pair I ordered are the Freddy Krueger edition Nikes, the infamous nightmare killer of, you guessed it, the "Nightmare on Elm St." series. They should be nice for long-boarding...