I bought my first pair of Doc Martens at the fleamarket at Waterlooplein in Amsterdam. I longed after the purple ones, but ended up buying the dark maroon as being more versatile and less…purple. (Joel continually, and sadly quite rightly, points out that purple and I do not really go together, fashionwise, as much as I love the color).
I wore those shoes pretty much to pieces, and when they died after we’d moved to Tilburg, the very next time I went to Amsterdam (thankfully only a few weeks later) I bought the replacement pair.
After the first week or so of “oh my god I’m shoving my feet into vices”, Docs are pretty much the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever had. They can be dressed down, they can be dressed up, they can look completely normal underneath pants (I have the calf-high ones, so they’re…unusual otherwise). My only complaint is that their zippers are not the most robust, and a few months ago I noticed that the teeth were beginning to pull out on my current pair. I wore them as long as I could until I realized it was best not to use the zippers, so I switched over to lacing them up, not touching the zipper any more.
But it wasn’t to last. This morning I put the boots on, and the weak spot blew out altogether, causing the zipper to unzip below the pull. Basically not salvageable.
So suddenly I was going shoe-shopping today. I brought the old one along on the possibility that the folks at the Doc Martens store here did repairs, and after dropping Gwen off at the Academy I headed up. Sadly, they don’t do repairs, but they did let me know about something I’ve managed to overlook despite walking past it regularly — there’s a shoe repair store in the mall.
For 35GBP they can put in a new zipper, but, given that it’s not an easy fix, they have to send it to one of the central branches to have it done, and given that it’s winter and demand is high, they said it could be 8-9 weeks.
I don’t want to be without my favorite shoes (including my only really good pair of waterproof shoes) for 8-9 weeks. But…having a backup pair would not be a bad idea. So I left the shoe with them, and headed back to the store, where shortly later I came away with these:
I am one happy bunny.
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