Word: shoes
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...secret of the success of the Nike corporation, which began to make its famous footwear in 1971 and grew from an unknown also-ran in the shoe business to the universally familiar $3 billion institution of today, is that it understood that sneakers embodied the values of the people who wore them. / Americans wanted a well-made, high-tech athletic shoe not because it was a necessity but because the consciousness of the country had changed. "Jogging," "getting in shape," "working out" were part of the new life-style (another '70s concept), and Nike gave customers a stylish shoe...
Sneakers -- or what some people still call tennis shoes and most everyone now refers to as athletic shoes -- are an American icon. The sneaker is not so much an object as an idea, a symbol of values that America has always taken pride in: social and physical mobility, practicality, informality, even rebellion (such as when Woody Allen wore a pair of Converse high-tops to escort First Lady Betty Ford to the ballet in 1975). It has only been since the 1960s that sneakers have become the shoe of everyday life, the U.S. form of mass transportation. Worn by bums...
...chairman and founder of Nike Inc. and the protagonist of Swoosh is Phil Knight, a former distance runner at the University of Oregon and a laconic accountant who thought it would be more enjoyable to sell shoes than balance checkbooks. He started out representing a Japanese running shoe called Tiger but realized he could create and hawk his own American shoe. Nike was named for the winged Greek goddess of victory and given the now familiar "Swoosh" logo (at the time, someone said it resembled an upside-down Puma insignia). At first Nike made shoes for serious runners...
...excesses, what better causes to spend it on than sport and fitness? Every year, the American desire to wed high-tech creativity with recreational activity grows more intense -- and the resulting gizmos grow more intriguing and elaborate. No innovation is safe from rethinking: last year's air-filled running shoe, for example, is now competing against a new computer-designed number from Puma that needs no laces, straps or Velcro fasteners. The Puma Disc tightens by means of an invisible system: a turn of the dial on the shoe's tongue compresses connecting sleeves around it, making the shoe...
...soured their souls. The children watched television all day, and slept on the floor or shared a single bed. They ate lunch meat from a cooler, or cooked fried chicken on some electric skillets and a hot plate they bought from a street person. Brandon once tripped over a shoe and burned his hand on hot oil in the skillet. He sobbed for an hour, but Tamey did not think the burn was bad enough to justify calling an ambulance. She was worried about the cost...