PS TO LAST POST

It all worked out. The more working class mall nearby had a couple of stores with amazingly low prices on suits, both owned and run by Arab guys who were super nice. I found a linen, or at least part linen suit one of these guys sold me for less than an expensive meal with some friends.

In a department store I found a pair of shoes on sale, and the lady behind the counter showed me how I could even get a further discount on them so that they were less than an expensive lunch. So I'm all set. I did look into new frames for my glasses that were a lot more exciting than the ones I wear now, but maybe I'll put that off for a while.

I actually don't mind so much going to this mall because there's not that many people in it usually when I'm there, and I love the great mix of people. When I was young it would have been mostly Irish and Italian "Americans," but now it's mostly African-American, Arab-American, Hispanic-Americans, and Asian-Americans with a minority of European-Americans (although many Europeans now have African and Arab and Asian antecedents) and many of them were speaking another language or with heavy accents.

I did see a gaggle of "white" young teenage girls with no accents except Jersey and when they spied a friend they tried to run to her but they were all wearing ridiculously stilted and platformed high heels that made it impossible for them to stand up straight and almost impossible to walk, let alone run. I saw some older women wearing them too and I have to admit, I dug the platform shoes women and some men (including me) wore back in the seventies, which were more or less based on the platform shoes from the forties (Carmen Miranda et. al.). But even though the women I knew who wore those then, like one of the loves of my life who came from Costa Rica so had the right, as I saw it, to wear them, and looked good in them, they also sometimes had trouble keeping their balance, especially after a few drinks.

But the current style look ugly to me, with the spike like heels and then what looks like two or more inches of sole. There's an ugly imbalance to them before they even have to be walked in. Oh well, I ain't no fashionista, but like all of us, I knows what I like. Hope those girls don't have too many leg and back troubles when they get older from them.

Here's what I mean. They look like cartoon shoes, like Minnie Mouse should be wearing them: