A few weeks ago, the internet lit up with the story of a man who had compiled a spreadsheet to help him achieve a very important goal—to park in every single spot of the parking lot at his local grocery store.
This story spoke to me for a variety of reasons—data! spreadsheets! pedantry!—but mostly because I viewed it as an obvious pandemic coping strategy. Who among us, in the face of over 12 months of tedium and lack of novelty, did not conceive of new and unusual “projects” to pass the time?1
One day in April of last year, for example, mere weeks into lockdown and confined to home, I drank a couple of Negronis and decided to celebrate the US Decennial Census by conducting my own little enumeration.
Of my shoes.
Like the parking-lot-spreadsheet endeavor, my project was grounded in data collection and, of course, a spreadsheet. I had the added advantage of being a demography fan-girl, a geographer…and also the consumer of two Negronis. I devised “enumeration districts” (EDs) for my shoes, but also a key set of questions: current residence, age, color, height, place of birth, and brand. I also gave each pair a name and an occupation.
I then changed the default spreadsheet font to my best approximation of “Census enumerator handwriting” and started counting.
My enumeration districts were few: six in total, which included my kitchen, hallway, two closets, bedroom, and Vermont. Many of my shoes appear to be seasonal residents of the kitchen. Anyway, that’s what the data show.
I was able to document all shoes in one go, with the exception of what I ended up calling the “Vermont Annex.” That wasn’t completed until November for lockdown reasons.
The Long 2020
Looking back, this was the first and most substantial of a number of pandemic coping strategies I undertook. With normality completely suspended, I responded by generating my own novelty. When I look back, I wonder if, like Picasso, my various stages of coping/creativity will coalesce into clear periods or eras.
For example, instead of a Blue Period, I went through a Fish Period. Similar to the Shoe Census, this was an early response to lockdown—March to May, 2020—back when store shelves were empty and restaurants and shops were struggling to sort out how they could pivot to online or delivery. The Fish Period didn’t endure because it was an expensive new habit to develop and also, crucially, because the novelty wore off really fast.
How many lobsters does one need to have delivered in a box to one’s doorstep? I now know the answer to that: one.
The Cake Period followed the Fish Period, more or less. The ennui had set in in earnest by this time and the cakes signified an abandonment of any attempt to Keep Eating As Normal (unlike the fish, which was merely the same eating, but BIGGER). Nearly every week, I baked a cake and then we ate it.
Actually, that’s not entirely true: first I would bake a cake, then take numerous photos of it in interesting places, and then we would eat it.2
(I’ve also cooked a lot of marmalade over the past 14 months and then complained when my family didn’t consume it quickly enough. Maybe I’ll look back on the entire pandemic epoch, March 2020 to May 2021, as my Marmalade Period.)
All of this—with perhaps the exception of the Shoe Census, which I shall return to—paled in comparison to a headlong early-summer tumble into my Hiking Period, or, really, my Tour du Mont Blanc Period. As cases fell in the UK and Europe last summer, and as the slimmest window of opportunity appeared for travel, I hit on the perfect summer holiday: a two-week circumnavigation of Mont Blanc, on foot. Had I backpacked before? No. Hiked more than a couple of hours at a time? Also no. But hey, if it had been a routine activity, it wouldn’t have counted as a Pandemic Coping Strategy.
But About Those Shoes
Had there been no pandemic, it’s still possible I would have hit on the idea for the Shoe Census (now, on the other hand, had there been no Negronis…). I do love my shoes. And I did want to celebrate the Census, which comes around only every 10 years, after all.
But—and I don’t know about you—this pandemic year has been really strange. An abandonment of normal rhythms and expectations, which has been disheartening at times, but also freeing. It’s not uncommon for me to want to bake cakes or to order fish as long as my arm; it is unusual for me to have the time and space to act on these impulses. In the normal way of things, my day is highly structured, with little excess time for hare-brained ideas or projects.
In normal times, for example, I’d scramble to find space for writing such as this. Indeed, when I look back, I am certain that January to May of 2021 will be remembered as my SubStack Period.3 Life is returning to normal so quickly that I now often struggle to find the time to write.
Shoe Census QuickFacts
I did want to say something about the Shoe Census. As you may have gathered, I collected the data and then lost interest, never really digging into what I had collected. In November of 2020, I went through a brief Map Period, along with many of my kind, for the 30 Day Map Challenge. I made a couple of shoe-related maps then, but here’s a case where, really, shoe geography has less to contribute than shoe demography.
The US Census Bureau provides what it calls “QuickFacts”—summary statistics for any community in the country. This is a great idea, vastly superior to the Excel pie charts I was tempted to assault you with here. You can thank me later.
According to Shoe Census 2020, I own 51 pairs of shoes.
Age. The average age of my shoes is about 4.6 years, but I have one pair that is 18 years old and 6 that range between 10 and 13 years of age. Seven pairs were less than one year of age in April of 2020. (When my shoes get worn, I take them to the cobbler, so they tend to last a long while.)
Place of Birth. A pie chart would fit really nicely here. Just saying. The largest proportion of shoes comes from Portugal (25 percent), closely followed by Spain (18 percent) and China (21 percent).
Italy, Greece, Germany, England, and Sweden also all make a strong showing, relatively speaking. Two pairs of shoes come from Vietnam and Thailand, respectively, which I think is pretty interesting. I also own shoes made in the U.S., but these are all boots, either Frye or L.L. Bean.
Brand. My most enduring allegiance is to Fluevog, a Canadian brand mostly made in Portugal. A full 39 percent of my shoe population is Fluevog. These are also most of my older shoes. In fact, my oldest pair of shoes, the data tell me, is named “OG Fluevogs.”
My younger shoes are largely Spanish—Chie Mihara but also Camper4 and other brands. Chies represent 19 percent of my shoe population and the next strongest showing (8 percent) are Hasbeens, from Sweden. (Fun fact for a bit of extra narrative color: Hasbeens have a wooden base and I sound like a horse when I wear them, which is often.)
Occupation. I know, I know. Shoes don’t have occupations. I was curious what purposes I wear them for, though—because, make no mistake, I do wear my shoes; they don’t live in a shoe museum. Apparently, a third of my shoes are “Everyday” shoes and I wish I could ask early 2020 Rachel what, precisely, that means.
Looking at the data, these appear to be a mixture of shoes that I think I should own (looking at you, Frye cowboy boots) and shoes I default to for every occasion (ballet flats).
More sensibly, 25 percent of my shoes are classed as “Work” shoes and 25 percent as “Summer.”5 This seems about right to me. I also own a number of pairs of running shoes.
Color and heel height. These categories sound boring so I’m not going to talk about either.
The Shoes of Summer
The center of my life is the UK and the US and, in both places, life is slowly but seemingly inexorably returning to some semblance of normal. I say semblance because what I notice primarily are the calls for “the best summer ever.”
Summers are usually eagerly awaited, but it’s not typical to expect them to be the Very Best Ever. This year is different.
Fish and Shoe Census and Cake Periods are no replacement for being out in the world in warm weather, moving about, and mixing with people. Like others, I can hardly contain my anticipation. I can barely wait for summer, in fact.
And, as it happens, I have just the right shoes for the occasion.
Imagine my disappointment when I discovered this was no pandemic project, but actually the result of six years of effort. Now I’m wondering how many parking spots there are at this store, so we could calculate the minimum time required to achieve full coverage, assuming he did a weekly shop.
Our favorite discovery during the Cake Period was Smitten Kitchen’s 4th of July cake, which would convert the greatest skeptic to patriotism.
My daughter and her partner remind me that this is a gross stretching of the truth, as November to January was also all about SubStack—I incessantly requested time to “workshop” my ideas.
Actually, Camper is probably my most enduring shoe love. The reason they’re not so well represented in Shoe Census 2020 is simply that I wore most of them out, over the years. I could write an entire essay about “Camper shoes I have loved” and I’d have ample photo evidence to back me up.
Flip flops count as shoes, by the way.