I don't know where to post this, so I guess I'll just put it here. I just saw the new, slickly-made-over cover of the Willamette Week, and it took me by surprise...it's like coming home and finding grandma has raided your closet and is stylishly dressed in all the latest fashions! Just when you thought she was about to fade into the floral print sofa and disappear. All cattiness aside, it really does look great, almost like a New Yorker cover. Now if they could just do something about that content. Specifically:

* Nix that atrocious "Queer Window" column

* Can that awful grandstanding professional queer Byron Beck

* Stop using lame rhetorical mini-sentences ending in question marks to lead into their talking points

*Come to think of it, overhaul or completely change their entire editorial tone

*Resolve their personality schism by deciding whether they want to be the Mercury or the Oregonian (hard to be both!)

*I don't have time to list the other things right now. But you can email me for more info.

WHAT??!??? SERIOUSLY? Of the scores of people who were likely involved in the design, manufacture, and advertising of this shoe, not one decisionmaker thought twice about it?

I realize I'm not really contributing anything to any sort of dialogue about the shoe, but HONESTLY. HONESTLY. Way to go, Nike uber-racists!

I couldn't agree more. With every point you made. Go, Tony LeTigre!

I don't have super big feet but I have monster ankles - not ankles, really, just legs that each end in a foot, so I have to wear usually a 10 1/2 to 11 1/2 depending on the parameters of the shoe, even though my Northern European/Celtic/Judaic/African toes are sometimes an inch from the tip. But try finding a men's shoe over 9 1/2 in Mexico. Nearly impossible. Different peoples have different bodies. The Nike approach is weird, but I have no doubt it will be successful.

Coming soon: Eyeglasses For Jews.

sorry steve, I'm a little lost here... what do you take umbrage against, the notion that native americans have a distinctive foot shape, that someone ought to make a shoe that caters this, or that they should market toward this particular need?

I admit the feathers and stars are a bit tacky, but seriously, put yourself in someone else's moccasins

i am part native american and i do indeed have wide and tall feet. i have always had problems finding shoes that fit well. but there is no way in hell i would put those ugly plain mainstream atrocities nike calls shoes on my feet. i think these shoes should be marketed towards people with wide tall feet not specifically towards native americans. by making these shoes so ugly are they insinuating native americans have bad taste?? these are about the ugliest shoes i've ever seen... thanks nike for your special consideration.

All of this comes in the wake of their inevitable cancellation of last year's Michael Vick line of clothing. They threw a lot of money at that project (and at Vick, to use his name), and now they're going for broke, yet again.

As to 'heritage callout': that's the weird code these people speak in. Your base layer is called a 'waffle package'. Possible material options for a shoe include 'leather opportunities' ("Who wouldn't want one of those?", an employee asked me, last year). The design of the shoe is called the 'story'.

It's very weird how they do things out there. They dearly love to throw their money around, and twice yearly (right now being one example) they will fly in product reps from all over the world, paying for transportation, lodging, food and disgusting amounts of booze (as well as the employ of vast numbers of AV geeks and union stagehands, who also do not come cheap), simply to show off their new ideas for shoes and clothes. You'd think they could just mail 'em a catalogue or something.

And somewhere in there, the idea of oversight gets lost, hence this latest stupid idea. No one could have seen the Vick thing coming (well, no one at Nike anyway), but this one has Bad Idea written all over it in ten-foot-tall letters.

Making shoes that specifically cater to Native Americans' foot size isn't a bad idea, and even saying so isn't all that bad -- as in, "hey, did you know that Native Americans typically have wide feet? We're making a shoe specifically designed to fit that foot size."

What makes this a ridiculously bad move is decorating it "Native American style". I mean, what's next? "Shoes for African American men, with BLING encrusted in the soles, because we know they like stuff like that!" or "Try our new shoes for Latinos, made extra small and with baskets of fruit on the heel of the shoe to call out their heritage as migrant workers!"

It's just really fucking presumptious. They probably brought in a Native consultant and heard what they wanted to hear, which is that Native Americans like sunrises and rainbows and feel real connected to the earth and the night sky and stuff. This brand of "multiculturalism" makes corporations feel like they're being understanding and respectful when all they're doing is draping their ignorance in a brightly colored cloth.

The story leaves out one redeeming point, money raised from the shoe will go to Native youth programs, as a tribal member of CTUIR I can appreciate that, and as much as I don't want to, I must commend Nike for having the desire to give attention to several nations of people that are wrongly labled as dependant on the government and who live on reservations that (lets face it) are usually ghettos (compared to suburbs).
Yesterday, in conversation with a co-worker (who must not have known I am native and local) about our local reservation, Indians and this new Nike he said "they're rich, they get money from the government, they CHOOSE to live that way" natives don't live off taxpayers and the US hasn't paid what treaties promised in nearly a century.

what I do have to complain about is the design of the shoe, WTF Man! LAAAAAME!

And feather patterns on the inside sole? Show me an Indian who steps on feathers!

however I have been to Pow-Wows and seen enough beaded swooshes to know that for some natives, this is right up their ally.

Native Pride™
'stupid fucking whiteman.'

so if I understand this right the Natives are the ones to purchase the shoe....HUM. Then from the sale of the shoe some funds are available to the Native population! Is there a flaw with this!!!! How about rebate instead! or some free shoes for kids that need some,Nice try?

There is plenty of room for beads or quills!

Is this kind of like how Mahattan got traded...
same techniques different generation.

Confused in Nebraska