Joe Montana must have cleaned up a few bucks for putting on apair of high shoes called 'City Walkers' and pretending to . . .well, to be doing something.
What he was doing was walking. A number of high buildings roseabove him and there was a bus in the immediate background, so thatmeant he was in some city.
Get it?
If you go for a walk as in just going for a walk, what you'redoing is just going for a walk. Sort of like just sitting on theporch or just paddling along in the water. Nothing really.
But if you put on the special $80 shoes, then you'reparticipating in a sport. If you do it in the mountains, of course,it's more often called hiking and the terrain sometimes requires thesupport of true hiking boots, especially coming downhill 3,000vertical feet with a 50-pound pack on your back.
This is rigorous stuff and most certainly would be a kind ofsport. But it's far more than taking a walk, as anyone can figureout.
So the shoe companies really must have put one over on us to getus to buy special shoes just to go for a walk. And they reallyscored if they got anyone to buy city walkers to go for walks in thecity.
I suppose I would have to get special suburban walking shoes forthe walks I take around home, and leave a pair of city walking shoesfor walks I take out around JFK Library while at work or . . . isthat really the city or would I need my suburban walkers? That loopsure doesn't feel like the city, but it does have a city zip code.Which I guess is how in the end you'd figure out which shoes to puton.
The other day, my wife and I took a walk along the loop aroundCastle Island in South Boston. It's a nice walk with swards ofgrass, and the historic fort, and a walkway that loops out aroundPleasure Bay up toward Kelly's Landing and back, giving walkers anice view of the harbor.
The problem there is dogs and what they leave behind, whichrequires a whole new sort of footwear designed along the lines ofwhat Farmer MacGregor wears down in the cow barn. Threepossibilities come to mind here: (1) The dogs' owners don't see theoffending behavior taking place, in which case it must be going onbehind the owner, who must be dragging the dog along at the time ofthe behavior; (2) the dogs' owners don't care about the result oftheir dog's behavior and immediately disavow responsibility for itssudden appearance on the landscape; (3) knowing how idiotic most dogowners are about this species which humans have pretty much bred thenobility out of, owners actually think the result of Poochie'sbehavior is something akin to strawberry ice cream. They leave itthere to be admired, for heaven's sake.
Anyway, a friend of mine who is a lifelong resident of Southietells me that what besmirches the walkways of Castle Island was leftthere by dogs other than South Boston dogs.
People in Southie, he says, are responsible for their dogs'behavior, and the non-strawberry ice cream found all over the walkwayaround Pleasure Bay is left by outside dogs, most likely from Milton.
'The worst thing that ever happened to Castle Island,' he says,'was the Tall Ships. When they came, the place was discovered by theoutside world and hasn't been the same since.'
But we arrive at a larger question: Though dodgingnon-strawberry ice cream in the quantities one finds at Castle Islandmay require very sure foot-eye coordination skills, is walking asport?
There are those who believe in their bones that if you can'tthrow it, kick it or hit it with a stick, it ain't a sport. Whichlets out such things as running a marathon or skiing down an icytrail trying to make precise turns at 80 miles per hour.
The hook 'n' bullet sports are always a bit suspect. Hard toimagine that a guy sitting in a deck chair drinking a beer whilewaiting for a strike is engaged in a sport. But then there's the guyfighting a 400-pound shark for an hour, dropping exhausted when it'sall over. Or the angler who has spent a lifetime learning the subtleart of finding the shy trout and fooling it out of the dark with ahomemade insect imitation. Sport?
To be sure, this is an eye-of-the-beholder sort of thing. Ifsport is the contrivance of an adversary whose defeat depends onone's ability and desire to excel, then the world of sport is verybroad indeed.
But walking? I see the special magazines, the clothes,advertisements for walking clubs to go scooting around together atdawn. Nice and convivial. But somehow the image of a networkinggroup dressed in coordinated Spandex clothes and expensive shoes towalk around a shopping mall -- the sad replacements for good olddowntown -- is a vision of the modern world that alarms me.
I mean, how far do you have to walk before you're doing a sport,anyway? From the house to the garage, or the whole AppalachianTrail?
No, away with those magazines and special duds. Away with JoeMontana and his city walkers. Call this a sport and somebody's boundto find a way to package it and tax it. Walking is walking, afterall, one of life's simplest and greatest pleasures. Who wants tohave to buy it? Or read about it?
