Streakers are Like Training Bras for Barely-Barefooters...

Streakers

...or like training wheels, if that's how you roll. I have a feeling that there are a lot of barefooting-wanna-be's out there who really want to be honest-to-goodness, go-everywhere-totally-barefoot barefooters, but they just need a little help until their confidence grows enough to venture outside and take their bare "dogs" for a jog without getting freaked out that someone will confront them. Streakers can be that helping hand for those nervous feet. It is like when you are learning to ride a bike for the first time with the training wheels attached, or trying on your first supportive undergarment. Slip on a pair of Streakers, like training bras for your feet. Wear them until you achieve that level of confidence to boldly go everywhere with your feet wearing nothing but what they had on the first time you wore your birthday suit.  

Barely-barefooters certainly don't want to strike out on their first barefooting adventure and get ambushed by a pair of athletic shoes stuffed with a fluffy doofus. These folks have been heard asking barefooters they encounter, "Did you know your feet are bare?" or, "Did you forget to put your shoes on today?" as they toddle past you. Then they will make a stunning declaration in a voice loud enough to knock squirrels out of trees, "Hey everybody look, his feet are bare. He must have forgotten to put his shoes on today." At this point in your fledgling existence as a barefooter, you don't have the confidence to come back with, "Hey, did you forget to put your ass-hat on today?" Instead, you run home so embarrassed by the encounter that you consider having your feet surgically removed. Streakers can save you from unnecessary surgery.

Naive, new barefooters might also have an encounter on the streets with seriously-snide runners and their seriously-expensive, high-tech running shoes. They wear several pairs of those shoes on their feet at the same time just to show everybody how seriously committed they are to running. Seriously? No, they really don't do that, but as they blow past you and your lowly little naked piggies, they will drop their snide-bombs on you about how you can't walk, much less run, without expensive high-tech shoes strapped to your feet. And, since you are outside walking or running in your bare feet, you must be a hobo who is "barely" running one step ahead of the law. As they are disappearing into the sunset they will yell back at you with words of advice telling you that it is dangerous to run, or even walk unshod, so knock it off. Then you watch them snag the ground with the thick rubber heel of one of their high-tech running shoes, twist their ankle and fall down adding a second crack to their backside. This kind of accident doesn't happen while running barefoot, or in Streakers, because neither bare feet or Streakers have thick rubber heels to trip you up, only your sleek bare soles to make you fleet of foot. Barefoot runners only have one crack on their backside. 

These kinds of encounters can be a major setback to those barely-barefooters trying to build their confidence to go forth with naked feet into the wild streets of their neighborhood, or even more daring, into public places like grocery stores and shopping malls. You must go out into the wild prepared, and wearing a pair of Streakers will help you survive the ignorant shoe-wearers of the world. 

I have been running sprints for over two years now wearing my not-expensive-at-all, high-tech bare soles. Yes, I sprint in my bare feet, and all of the leg, knee, and foot problems that I used to suffer from when I ran wearing expensive, high-tech running shoes, disappeared like those two-crack-backside-seriously-snide runners left behind in my dust. 

 So put on your Streakers and go kick some fluffy-ass on the mean-streets before I run out of hyphenated words to use! 

"Streakers" are Born

Streakers for men can be worn 

with the toe strap over the 2nd toe...

...or with the toe strap over the big toe.

Totally sole-less!

Streakers for women are made the same as men's 
but with different colored jewels added for distinction.

Streakers are also available in 

the sporty-looking double strap look.

The name Streakers just seems to fit these barefoot sandals. I originally designed and created them for my own use to help me overcome my shyness of being barefoot in the presence of strangers in public places. They worked so well that I decided to design Streakers for other body parts, and now I am able to be totally naked in the presence of strangers in public places! No, not really.

Public places I have worn my Streakers thereby avoiding rejection and ejection, for being barefoot, by management, daft door greeters, sales clerks, and security:

Supermarkets
Healthfood Stores
Pizza Restaurants
Barber shops
Chinese restaurants

...to be continued.

   

Another "Barefooter" is Born

    When I was born I came out barefoot, and this seemed perfectly natural to this new baby. My feet were the first part of me that I identified with – could be because they were the largest body parts I could see – and I quickly discovered that even though they were all the way down at the other end of my wrinkled little body, I could control their every move and I happily waved them in that bright hospital air.
    
    While lying there innocently admiring my feet, something called a nurse suddenly wiped me down and then proceeded to shimmy a pair of fuzzy little blue socks onto my naked feet. As I helplessly watched her dress each foot, but not the rest of my body, I discovered that along with having happy feet I was also a happy boy – that is until those fuzzy socks smothered my toes and my feet weren't so happy anymore. After the nurse had finished, I cringed when I saw that my feet now didn't look like the rest of my body because of those socks. I wasn't blue and fuzzy looking anywhere else. I wondered why those were the first of my new body parts to be covered up so quickly while the rest of me was splayed out like a nudist on a lawn chair.
   
    Being the newborn that I was, I assumed that feet must be the most important body parts to keep covered up. Of course, I found out later in life that isn't true after I decided to remove all of my clothing at the grocery store while shopping with my Mom. She had to chase me all over the store like I was a criminal on the run (barefoot unfriendly stores still make me feel like a criminal). By the time she caught up with me sitting on bags of frozen okra in one of the freezers, my bottom was as blue as the socks I began life in at the hospital. To this day, I still can't eat okra thinking that someone might have been sitting on the those frozen veggies! 

    After that incident, Mom told me it would be okay if I took off my shoes and socks and to be barefoot, as long as I leave everything else on. That was fine with me because at that early age I decided I didn't like the feeling of having my feet covered up all the time. But who would have guessed that around the next corner of my life I was about to encounter "shy feet."  

    Around that corner I ran shoeless into being a self-conscious teen, and I suddenly became too shy to show my toes. Now, the only places that I would go barefoot were at the beach with my feet quickly buried in the sand (which made getting to the water much more difficult), when I went to bed immediately plunging them under the covers, and sometimes in the shower. Socks and shoes were permanent fixtures on my feet. Like the concrete shoes worn by gangsters anchored at the bottom of dirty rivers, my constantly shod existence was weighing me down with even more anxiety about my shy feet. 

    Not wanting to end up at the bottom of a river, I was determined to free my shy feet from those stinking shoes, and to rediscover the pleasures of being barefoot as much as possible. I wanted to be like a kid again when I went everywhere in my neighborhood sans shoes. But I would still only go barefoot where it was acceptable (like around the house, at the beach, and in the shower). I totally lacked the confidence needed to go barefoot in public places. I really wanted to, but I hadn't been able to defeat my "shy-feet." Eventually I started wearing flip flops to stores, restaurants, and movie theaters. I even had a job for several years where wearing flip flops was acceptable. That was as close as I could get to being barefoot in public, and that was good enough for now since I was taking baby barefoot steps toward developing a barefoot lifestyle for myself.

    But as most thick-skinned barefooters know, it doesn't take long before you don't want to wear shoes at all anymore, anywhere. The more you don't "shoe-it", the more you want to do it. So, I began walking barefoot in my neighborhood when I took the dogs on their walks, and when I would go get the mail down the street at the mail kiosk. But if I saw someone coming my way while out walking, I would change directions to avoid having to deal with the strange looks and not-so-smart comments. I also began driving everywhere without shoes on, but as soon as I arrived at my destination I would slip on the flips. I really just wanted to be able step freely out of the car and go into the store without having to get my feet dressed, but I just couldn't muster up the nerve.

    Then one day while sitting in my car in the parking lot of a local grocery store, nervously contemplating whether or not I should go inside without shoes on, I said out-loud, "Oh the hell with it, I'm going in." I summoned up one of my last nerves that I hadn't used in years and strutted barefoot from my car toward the grocery store doors. As I approached the doors I spotted the usual sign in the window displaying a basic outline drawing of a shirt with a slash through it, and depicted next to that was a cartoonish pair of bare feet with the same slash mark – Fred Flintstone must have modeled for whoever created those signs. Upon seeing that sign, I immediately froze in my tracks (freezing is a recurring theme with me at grocery stores). In a sweaty panic, I took a step backward into a warm glop of gum on the sidewalk and made a sticky retreat back to my car.

   But I was not deterred by this temporary setback. My growing desire to be as free of shoes as possible made me realize that my burgeoning barefoot lifestyle was being cramped, like toes in a pair of too-tight shoes, because of my "shy feet." That moment of realization led to my idea for a sole-less shoe that would look like I was wearing a flip flop thereby allowing me to venture forth into public places with my feet incognito. It was like putting on a pair of those goofy glasses and mustache disguises on each foot so no one would recognize the fact that I was not wearing any footwear. So that's what I did, well, not the goofy glasses thing, but I designed and assembled a pair of bottomless shoes and I call them "Streakers."