Stompers Boots and 16" Harness Boots
Stompers is a very small boot shop in San Francisco that sells premier Wesco boots at a discount price. You can go in there and find boots to try on that you will not find gathered together in any other spot on the planet that I know of. They sell a lot of 16" Engineer boots that bikers love to wear. Those were the boots worn by Marlon Brando in the movie Wild One in 1953. Arnold Schwarzenegger wore harness boots in the movie Terminator 2. So I tried on both of those styles. Stompers sells several brands of harness boots. Without doubt, the best harness boot they offer is the one made by Wesco in Oregon. When I tried on the Wesco harness boots, those were the ones. I knew it instantaneously. Square toes and the harness with the silver rings on the side. Square toe boots were worn by the soldiers in the Civil War. Even Abraham Lincoln wore square toe boots. I wanted these 16' boots because of the protection from the heat pipes, for the warmth in cooler weather, for the ability to tuck my pant legs into them on occasion, for the way the soles grip the pavement, for the stylish look, and for the way they remain upright - due to the heavy leather lining - after taking them off. It took 12 weeks to get these things made and delivered. They have to weigh close to 10 pounds together. On my feet, it is as if they are not even there.
Breaking them in will take some time. It has taken a couple rounds of blisters on the tops of my feet to allow me to keep them on all day without screaming as I ripped open new flesh when I took them off. But I expected that in new boots. Now I have callouses and they feel very comfortable for all-day wear. I can now even take them off myself without my wife straddling each leg while I plant my other boot on her backside and push her while she recites cinematic language about how they kill her hands. Another option is to get what they call a boot jack. You stick your heel in that thing to hold your foot down, and, while standing on the boot jack's base with your other foot, you try to lift your leg out of the boot before a Charlie Horse in your calf causes you to leap from the chair so you have to stick your foot back in again. I bought a boot jack from the flea market for $1.00 and tried to pry my feet from these boots. When I put the other booted foot on the base of the jack, the thing sounded like the cracking of a redwood when it split apart. So that sort of explains why they have these other boot jacks at Stompers. These things are made out of oak or hickory, look like a painter's pallet, and are the size of a 16" pizza pan from Little Caesars. You lock your foot in that thing both in the front and back and heave your club foot out of there like extracting a python from a hole. An army could stand on the end of it. And it costs $89!!
So...I thought I would wait a while, suffer some more torn scabs, listen to my wife complain a little longer about how she wasn't going to pull those things off again and yada, yada, yada before I put $89 in a piece of wood that I wasn't going to need much longer. Now, if I rest a while in between, I can pull each of them off on my own and only have to jump back in them occasionally when a Charlie Horse attacks my leg. In spite of all this, I wouldn't give these boots back to them if they paid me. If you have a svelte frame, there is nothing that looks as good as these in black jeans. Plus, they add about 3" to my height. I now tower over people at 6'4". Now that I have applied the Huberd's Shoe Grease, I can walk through a swamp and ride in rain all day without effect. I would have to be surfing on concrete for several miles to wear these soles down. I will be passing these down to my sons and their sons before these things ever expire. They will probably be in some museum to show people what motorcyclists used to wear 150 years ago.
Breaking them in will take some time. It has taken a couple rounds of blisters on the tops of my feet to allow me to keep them on all day without screaming as I ripped open new flesh when I took them off. But I expected that in new boots. Now I have callouses and they feel very comfortable for all-day wear. I can now even take them off myself without my wife straddling each leg while I plant my other boot on her backside and push her while she recites cinematic language about how they kill her hands. Another option is to get what they call a boot jack. You stick your heel in that thing to hold your foot down, and, while standing on the boot jack's base with your other foot, you try to lift your leg out of the boot before a Charlie Horse in your calf causes you to leap from the chair so you have to stick your foot back in again. I bought a boot jack from the flea market for $1.00 and tried to pry my feet from these boots. When I put the other booted foot on the base of the jack, the thing sounded like the cracking of a redwood when it split apart. So that sort of explains why they have these other boot jacks at Stompers. These things are made out of oak or hickory, look like a painter's pallet, and are the size of a 16" pizza pan from Little Caesars. You lock your foot in that thing both in the front and back and heave your club foot out of there like extracting a python from a hole. An army could stand on the end of it. And it costs $89!!
So...I thought I would wait a while, suffer some more torn scabs, listen to my wife complain a little longer about how she wasn't going to pull those things off again and yada, yada, yada before I put $89 in a piece of wood that I wasn't going to need much longer. Now, if I rest a while in between, I can pull each of them off on my own and only have to jump back in them occasionally when a Charlie Horse attacks my leg. In spite of all this, I wouldn't give these boots back to them if they paid me. If you have a svelte frame, there is nothing that looks as good as these in black jeans. Plus, they add about 3" to my height. I now tower over people at 6'4". Now that I have applied the Huberd's Shoe Grease, I can walk through a swamp and ride in rain all day without effect. I would have to be surfing on concrete for several miles to wear these soles down. I will be passing these down to my sons and their sons before these things ever expire. They will probably be in some museum to show people what motorcyclists used to wear 150 years ago.