Archive for the ‘review’ tag
KEEN Commuter (Part I)
As a yearly ritual, I’ve gotten used to spending the better part of February poring over the REI catalog in anticipation of the arrival of my yearly dividend. This ceremonial pondering isn’t completely free of enjoyment, but this year when KEEN announced they were going to make an SPD-compatible sandal, tradition was abandoned; this year’s decision was easy.
Sometime back in the ’90s, Shimano made an SPD-compatible sandal. For those of us who had road shoes and clipless pedals way back in the day and wanted a way to tool around town without sounding like a drunk Fred Astaire at the local ice cream parlor, they were a godsend. And if the Shimano offering was a bit too blue-light-special for your taste, John Fluevog also put out a significantly more “haute couture” SPD-compatible shoe that in a pinch could be worn with a tux if you happened to be commuting to a wedding and forgot to bring your Florsheims.
Sadly, it seems, what started as a great idea lost its momentum, and quite a few years passed without much choice in a casual cycling shoe. In part, I’m sure, to the emergence of mountain style SPD shoes, which started to incorporate lugged rubber soles that protruded beyond the cleat and made walking slightly less clumsy. Even so, they lacked style and still weren’t something you’d want to want to wear to the office.
So, thanks to KEEN for giving new life to an old idea whose time was never really past… it just needed a toe bumper.