I met a musician once named Ahab Rex who worked with athletic shoes. I can‘t remember in what capacity exactly he worked with footwear, but I do clearly remember one bit of our conversation: he explained to me the reasoning behind hip-hop stars wearing gleaming white shoes.

“The reason that those guys wear gleaming white footwear and clothing is that it is a symbol of how successful they are,” Rex told me–and I am paraphrasing from my inebriated memory banks. “If you can wear all that white and stay clean, it means that you’ve got so much money that you don’t have to do anything for yourself; you only walk on carpets.”
It made total sense; except for eating and drinking. It don’t think it would look very thug to have your bodyguard feeding you mashed potatoes with a spoon.

“Yo, open up tha hanga door, Diddy. Here come da airplane, nigga!”
I think that a similar argument can be made for house shoes. Remember in Boyz in tha Hood how Ice Cube wanders around his hood slanging rock while wearing house shoes? That pretty much proves he wasn’t scared of shit, because he clearly wasn’t planning on running anywhere.* Not only do corduroy house shoes have cardboard-thin soles, but Cube wore them with the heels stepped down.

The Shoewhorse wears his house shoes the same way and I can scarcely make it up a flight of stairs without one of them falling off. House shoes are raw, but house shoes with the heel stepped down are gully; and gully is harder than real.

So, after all of this serpentine wandering of keyboard and mind, I give you the “Castro” by Globe Footwear. Castro is a house shoe in the sense that it is made of suede and corduroy with a faux-wool lining, but unlike lesser house shoes, it has the sole of a skate shoe.

Fucking genius, right? A house shoe that can be worn all day long without any serious snags.

A quick jog to the store to pick up some V8 and Miller High Life: no problem. A two-mile walk to return Marci X to the video store: it’s on. A night of drinking and electronic bull-riding at the local cowboy, tranny bar: dude, what the fuck is wrong with you? You can even skate in the Castro.

Gully.

The only thing that’s missing is the stepped down heel. The back of the Castro is a bit too padded for that, but who fucking cares.

Furthermore, as much as this hybrid house shoe can hydroplane on its own merits, Globe packages them in a shoebox that looks like it once held cigars. They also sent the Shoewhorse a Cuban-style dress shirt, a cigar, a fake moustache and a fucking flask!

No lube required, Globe; I’m already wet like a thunderstorm.

*”And real gangsta-ass niggas don’t run for shit, cuz real gangsta-ass niggas can’t run fast” -Ghetto Boys