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Shoeloose and fancy free
By adamg on Sat, 10/14/2017 - 9:22am
Dan Roche noticed a barefoot messiah across the car from him on the Orange Line yesterday.
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Comments
Dude you better soak those
Dude you better soak those feet in bleach ASAP. NASTY
Why not?
There isn't much different from being barefoot and wearing flip flops, which seem to be all the rage among some people these days for unexplainable reasons. Flip flops are the most impractical piece of footwear ever invented, yet people insist on wearing them on the T, on escalators, and everywhere else around the city.
Because
You are in direct contact with the floor of an Orange Line train.
I'm no flip flop or sandal wearer, but the key difference is that the bottom of your feet at least have something between them and the ground wearing flip flops.
Soap and Water
Unless you are eating with your feet, does that even matter?
Maybe I do eat with my feet
I once ran in a road race with a smallish field. I ended up following a barefoot runner. All I could think about were the pebbles, glass, and whatnot on the road. I mean, I was wincing watching him run.
At home, in a controlled environment, I am always barefoot.
Calluses are amazing
I run barefoot! I can tell you that it doesn't take very long to build up calluses that protect you from that stuff. Growing up I could barely walk barefoot on gravel, and now I can run on it with no trouble. (It's kinda like a foot massage, really.)
(ETA: You also learn pretty quickly to scan your path for glass and dog shit. They're easy to spot in the daylight. Never have stepped in dog shit barefoot, but even if I did, my feet are easier to clean than shoes are...)
There isn't much different
Unless you have even the slightest blemish, crack, or dryspot on the sole of your foot.
Love the other shoes
...in the photo, in defensive crouch on both sides of him.
I took this photo
One detail you're missing - Adam cropped the photo a little, probably for scaling purposes - is that the white shopping bag across the aisle from the woman (let's call her Staphanie) contains... a pair of Uggs. Nope, can't make this stuff up.
Yep, you got it right
I should've looked at the photos more carefully!
Staphanie — Didn't She Sing That Song "Bacterial Girl" ?
( ♬ ♪ ♫ 'cause we are living in a bacterial world, and I am a bacterial girl ♬ ♪ ♩)
( ♬ ♪ ♫ just go to hell with that Purell, they're not the enemy ♬ ♪ ♩)
Toespreading is the new Manspreading
.
Do you think those feet look unused to the streets?
Appear to be quite clean with well groomed nails. Could this be a case of a disastrous shoe malfunction necessitating a walk on the wild side?
You're not going to see
You're not going to see homeless folks going around barefoot, in general. Not around here, at least. And yeah, those are not the feet of someone homeless.
MBTA marketing ploy
Because of privatization the platforms and trains are so spotless you can ride barefoot.
The "earlier" link is a Uhub classic
The exchange about naked butts on the T and scabies is hilarious.
Good thing using the 8x10
Good thing using the 8x10 color glossies, with the circles and arrows, or I might have missed the bare feet in the picture :-)
+1 for "Alice's Restaurant" reference
:-)
I saw one situation last week
I saw one situation last week which rivals or even tops this.
I was at the Bus Station, waiting for a relative's departure. We had lucked into getting some seats along the rotunda railing. Next to me was a young woman and young man, with a very small girl who I assume was their daughter. Little thing was just early toddler, walking back and forth as long as somebody held her hand. Although both adults were sensibly dressed, the little one was entirely barefoot!
I can easily imagine not owning shoes for a child that small, Inexplicable, however, that they didn't at least put some socks on her!
My toddler goes barefoot quite a bit
Her feet are just as tough as mine, or even more so (young skin is more elastic), and she can walk on chip mulch and gravel without complaint. Sometimes she wears shoes, sometimes she doesn't -- it's up to her except in a few places where we insist on them.
Why should it be different for a child than for an adult?
Personally, I'm happy to go barefoot damn near anywhere, since I hate sweaty feet. My exception is public restrooms. I used to go barefoot on the T, but they told me off for it. >_>
Why?
Why?
Because it's a bus terminal.
Granted, it's pretty clean - as bus terminals go. Compared to PABT in NYC (where I occasionally commuted and once in a while worked), I'd almost give it "clean room" status.
On the full scale, however, a bus terminal - even one thoroughly cleaned - is only as clean as the dirtiest thing that has gone through it since the last cleaning.
By the way, they took turns watching their suitcases to make restroom stops before their departure time. So, mama took little girl into the restroom with her. Unless she balanced daughter on her head while she did her own business, little girl was walking on that floor.
That being said, the bus terminal is probably better than the buses. The bus terminal floor is nonabsorbent. Only God knows what might have soaked into and might still be lingering in the upholstery of a bus, which I'm pretty sure gets a thorough cleaning less frequently than the bus terminal floor.
Yeah, can't really comment on
Yeah, can't really comment on the bathroom, although if they're taking the kid to the potty, she might not have touched the ground. (By the way, as a parent, you kind of have to give up on caring about some of these things -- lots of bathrooms don't have changing tables, so you have to change the kid on the floor of the bathroom, and sometimes they roll off the blanket. What can you do?)
The only thing I particularly have concern about, as someone with a healthy immune system, is hookworm. That's why I don't go into bathrooms barefoot, even though I'm unlikely to catch it in this part of the world. Anything else just washes off at the end of the day.