There is nothing like the future showing up late for a good cause. As per Uproxx.com, “The mythical shoe that originally captured the imagination of audiences in Back to the Future II is being released – and they’re here to help create a future without Parkinson’s disease.” Clearly, this is impressive. First, it exemplifies that whole “life imitating art” thing. Second, these shoes will be “auctioned on eBay with all net proceeds going directly to The Michael J. Fox Foundation. Each day for the duration of the ten-day auction, one hundred and fifty pairs of the 2011 NIKE MAG shoes will be made available via eBay’s Fashion Vault.” A sincere kudos is in order to the marriage of industry and philanthropy.
Since these shoes are priced at $1500 a piece, there’s a surefire bet that I will never wear them, but upon closer examination, there’s no reason for me to. The coolest part about these shoes when they were featured in Back to the Future II was their ability to “powerlace,” thus absolving the wearer of the nefarious and tiresome responsibility of having to tie his or her own shoes. Imagine a world where no one trips down the steps on account of loosely fastened laces! Insurance companies might go bankrupt, but emergency rooms will be empty of clumsy folk. It would be a win / win. However, according to random salesguy in the video (Bill Heder), this technology won’t be available until 2015. Not for nothing, but Velcro has been around since about 1948, and we’re expected to believe that in all that time – decades that included the creation of hair in a can, cheese in a can, the Opti-Grab, the Thighmaster, and the Slap Chop – that no one has been able to automate Velcro? This just seems unreasonable, improbable even.
It seems the biggest selling point for these shoes – aside from benefiting the fight against Parkinson’s – is that they light up and hold a charge for four hours. First off, are people aware of the energy crisis that looms at our door? Haven’t the last few years been filled with rhetoric on how to conserve energy and lower electric bills? Isn’t this why I got corkscrew light bulbs, unplug my toaster after each use, and keep my air conditioner on “energy saver”? At the same time, being able to afford $1500 for a shoe implies the means to pay a higher Con Ed bill. That aside, the world has already been privy to shoes that light up. Perhaps they don’t stay lit for four hours, but they light with each step, and if you walk a lot throughout the day, it’s conceivable that you’d accumulate four hours of illumination, no?
Given the attributes that these shoes showcase and the seemingly similar commodities that we already have access to, the shoes themselves serve as more of a placation than anything else. Where am I going with this? Well, I think it’s clear that these shoes are the government’s way of allaying our desire for the coolest feature in Back to the Future – next to the hoverboard of course, but in the same league: flying cars!
As a child of the eighties, I heard prophecies of flying cars and was further encouraged by the illustrated cover of a Boy’s Life magazine from 1990, on which two people playing chess say in a dome-shaped sedan that hovered a few feet off the ground but was completely self-operational. Eventually came Back to the Future II and the establishment of illuminated, elevated highways to allay the fears that flying cars would signal airborne tragedies. Doubts were dispelled and we all rejoiced at the possibility of never having to pay attention to the road again. Where we were going, we didn’t need roads.
But alas, we are ground bound to gas guzzlers that stall if their tailpipes and gas tanks are filled with vegetable scraps and household refuse. (What of Mr. Fusion?!) In the end, the Nike Mag is a wonderful fundraising tool for the fight against Parkinson’s disease, and those who can afford them should do so out of philanthropy; those who can’t are able to donate in other ways; however, for me, these shoes simply represent a dream of reckless flight that goes unfulfilled.
