Painted shoes manifesto - Brief Article

Whole Earth, Summer, 2002 by Howard Rheingold

I have been thinking about small acts that can infect people with more goodwill, in response to the increasing conflict in the world. I remembered an ironic joke. You know how someone cuts you off in traffic and you lean on the horn, or even give them the finger? Have you ever thought that the person you encountered might do the same thing to another person, in traffic or elsewhere, and that the wave of bad vibes would propagate through the world? The punch line to the joke is "...and eventually it all ends up in the Middle East."

I was looking for something on the order of Anne Herbert's "Commit Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Beauty," but I wanted something that could create a freemasonry of goodwill in which the people who follow these instructions become visible to one another.

Then I saw what was right in front of me--down at the bottom of my legs, actually. My shoes. In an instant, I knew what my destiny would be. The reason I've made it this far is to do this one thing, to move from being a painter of my own shoes to an evangelist of shoe-painting.

I've been painting my own shoes for seven years. I've traveled the world many times over in those shoes. They've never led me into trouble, and in general their effect upon the world has been positive. Most people don't notice. When you have flaming rocket ships on your shoes and most people don't notice, you wonder what else they don't notice. Customs inspectors never stopped me.

In seven years, the only time I encountered someone else wearing painted shoes was on a railroad car between Cambridge and London. It was hard to tell how old she was because of the fluorescent spiked Mohawk and the safety-pin piercings. Despite her attire, she was shy. I understood. So am I! We knew it was impossible to not talk to each other. We used acrylics and were the only people we had ever met who painted their own shoes. We had the conversation that I've had with many others about the fact that there must be billions of shoes on Earth, and there can't be more than a dozen people who hand-paint their own shoes.

Paint your shoes! The act itself is great fun. You can be festive, gleeful, or ritualistic. It's entirely up to you! Like burning money, you get the adrenaline rush of transgressing a boundary, but there's nothing wrong with painting your shoes. The act is the opposite of antisocial, unless, of course, you paint generic insults. It means the wearer isn't afraid to be friendly toward strangers. And if there is one thing the world needs, it's more people being friendly toward strangers.

Paint your shoes! I buy a pair of black clogs every two years. A good pair costs around seventy-five dollars, and will work in barefoot-on-the-lawn weather and will work in rain and puddles. They only last two years if you wear them all the time. I mix good acrylic colors in paper cups, add just enough water to get the consistency I seek (thick but not gelatinous). You don't have to know how to draw a straight line. Use brush strokes if you want, or just splatter. Pour if that moves you. Fingerpainting is fine, but you have to wash the acrylics off your hands within minutes or they become difficult to get off. If you use every color you can imagine, as I do, the same shoes will match everything you wear. Or paint different shoes in different color schemes. Stencils are easy.

Paint your shoes! You will make people smile. You will liberate your creative spirit! You will signal that you aren't just a consumer of culture but a creator, a contributor in your own small way to the aesthetic public sphere! You'll have interesting conversations with people who don't paint their shoes but comment on yours, and think of the phun when two shoe painters meet! Painting shoes brings a little bit of good will into the world, and although it's a small thing, it becomes a large thing when enough people multiply it!

It makes any statement you want it to make, except: "I don't paint my shoes."

If you paint your shoes, send stories and pix!

Paint your shoes, improve the world! Pass it on!

Howard Rheingold was editor of Whole Earth Review (1990-1994) and of the Millennium Whole Earth Catalog. His next book, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, will be published by Perseus in October 2002.