Can I be so real with you guys? There was a post going around tumblr a little while back about buying one crap pair of shoes every year or one good pair of shoes every ten years, and how a good pair of shoes that lasts you 10 years and costs you $100 is way more economical in the long run. And I think I have been quietly losing my mind ever since I first saw this post. Because:
1. it is impossible for me to buy a new pair of shoes that don't instantly fuck up my feet for under $160, and
2. I wear through even expensive well-made good shoes in about a year. And those last longer than cheap shoes, I don't buy cheap shoes even if I do find some that are kind of supportive because I'll blast through them in two months. And this is just from normal daily wear around the city.
But based on that post, my peers are out here buying cheap shoes and having them last a whole year, or mid-priced shoes and having them last 10 years. How???????????
@rigormorphis re: 1) i think this is an inflation comes for us all thing—when the original quote was written in the nineties a hundred dollar pair of boots was a LOT higher on the price scale than it is today. my current boots are ~200 and while i can find some shoes i’m able to wear comfortably for less than that definitely not *boots*
re: 2) i guess its hard to compare because everyone is rotating through different numbers of shoes and walking different amounts—generally my daily wear type shoes last me like 12 months of use if they’re nice enough (which in practice is often ~6 mo twice because there is basically zero overlap between what i find comfortable in summer and winter) but i definitely have some comfortable but more occasional wear shoes that have lasted much longer than that
@rigormorphis @alis i mean, that too, but i do not think hundred dollar boots existed in victorian england tbh so the inflation between when discworld was written and now seemed more salient
@Satsuma@glitch.cat.family @rigormorphis@federatedfandom.net So the actual answer is that the original quote is referring to *Ankh-Morpork dollars*, i.e., the fictional currency of the main city of the Discworld novels. So it was meant to have the "vibe" of price discrepancy in a fantasy version of Victorian England, without actually using Really Real World numbers.