Soft Hardwood

Today I photographed a beautiful home - couldn't have been more than a few years old - all the materials (appliances, floors, fixtures) looked brand new and super high quality.

Sometimes the homeowner or agent (or a polite sign at the door) will ask me to remove my shoes, which is fine - when in Rome - but if there's no sign and no one asks, I use the heck out of the welcome mat and remain shod and no one bats an eye.

I generally wear nice shoes that haven't stamped out flaming bags of poo. And I just feel more comfortable working in my shoes - maybe because I'm working, not about to curl up on the couch and watch a movie, and I'm in someone else's house. I don't want their floor yuck on my socks.

Not only that, but aren't floors supposed to be able to withstand shoes? I mean, unless you're wearing track spikes or the flooring material is cheddar cheese, any standard floor should stand up well against typical shoes. But I digress. It's no big deal, so I go with the flow.

Today I kept my shoes on, though I did notice there were a couple of pairs of shoes near the front door. Call me sneaky, but I cruised right by them and got to work at the other end of a long hallway.

As I was getting ready to shoot, I could hear the unshod ones talking about moving their shoes out of the way so they wouldn't be in the shot, and while talking about having removed their shoes I heard, "These hardwood floors are really soft."

[Scooby Doo noise] The hard wood is soft? So these are softwood floors? Is that a new trend in modern home construction? Is that because we're all so sedentary now that our joints can't take the pounding of walking on hardwood floors? I'm confused.

Aside from not-so-soft hardwoods, in these neighborhoods there's even less reason to remove one's shoes, because there isn't a speck of dirt on any of the streets or sidewalks. There's nothing you could track into one of these homes. An army elves keep these neighborhoods absolutely spotless. It's like walking through Disneyland - sparkling clean.

If we were in the Tenderloin or the Mission, then it would make perfect sense. You could easily track syphilis and hepatitis into a home in those areas. On any sidewalk you can choose from gum, trash, used condoms, needles and sometimes human excrement, to name a few.

Maybe that's why I like to keep my shoes on. After many years of city livin', the thought of removing my shoes is never first on my mind, no matter where I am, and I'm still careful about where I wear open-toed shoes.