Shoemaker Designs Size 75 Shoe To be Used For Social Distancing. No, They Totally Do NOT Look Like Clown Shoes.
CLUJ, Romania/BUCHAREST – Soon after a two-month lockdown to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus eased in Romania in mid-May, Grigore Lup, a Romanian shoemaker from the Transylvanian city of Cluj, noticed people were not respecting the rules of social distancing.
So Lup came up with the idea of long-nosed leather shoes to help keep people apart. They come in a European size 75.
I mean, these are glorified clown shoes.
I get the sentiment behind it all - social distancing - but that doesn't make it practical in the slightest bit. Anyone that has dressed up as a clown for Halloween knows the struggle of having to walk around in costume quality clown shoes. It's no fun. You're constantly kicking shit you don't mean to, you feel like there is simply too much shoe. That's just with standard clown shoes that you get at party depot or some shit.
You could imagine that since these shoes are made by someone who knows what the fuck they're talking about - not some random factory cranking out fucking Halloween costumes - they'll probably feel like normal shoes. They just happen to have a massively inconvenient toe. As someone who walks on their tiptoes constantly, I couldn't think of a worse shoe to wear.
How are you even supposed to get around in these shoes? You can't simply walk like a normal human in these shoes, you have to pretty much drag your feet the whole time (shown in the video above). What happens when you accidentally kick a curb? Do you get sent flying like a catapult? Being catapulted seems like the only possible outcome in that scenario other than having that absurd toe snap like a toothpick.
“You can see it on the street, people are not respecting social distancing rules,” said Lup, who has been making leather shoes for 39 years.
“I went to the market to buy seedlings for my garden. There weren’t many people there but they kept getting closer and closer.
“If two people wearing these shoes were facing each other, there would be almost one-and-a-half meters between them.”
If there are two people on earth wearing these shoes at all, that would be a minor miracle. Two people facing each other with these shoes on is out of the realm of possibilities. Again, I get the idea behind it all, it's just the worst way to go about it. I'm all for social distancing but surely there has to better way to go about it than throwing on some shoes you'd expect to see when you show up for your scuba class.
I'd much rather rock something like the 'noodle copter 9000' than be able to hardly move. Or, of course, you could always just kind of eyeball the 6 feet, like everyone else. No need to go out of your way to dress like a lunatic, just be sensible and you'll be fine.