What is the ONE place/event you'd love to be barefoot, but you haven't worked up the nerve yet; say, in a doctor's office, a house of worship, family gatherings, or even outside your own house? For me, it's something "up close and personal": getting a haircut at my local barbershop. What horrible things will they say???????????????? There's no point in going to a new barber...gotta go where I've been going.
For me it WAS, going to a football match, but I managed to do that one back in May. I'd been barefoot to matches while on a pre-season tour/holiday in Ibiza, but a bread and butter league game back in Blighty was a bit different. Ok, it was an away game at a ground I'd not been to before and I didn't know anyone else there which made it a bit easy. I suppose to make it really count I need to do it at a home game. I think I've pretty much done everything else at least once.
For me it's the street I live in, in broad daylight (I've done the night walks – way too sleepy to enjoy them). In my defense, it's right in the center of the town I live in. The smaller the town, the harder it gets. Also, New York (except for once in the West Village during a rainstorm, when I didn't want to ruin my new Adidas. Or that's what I told my friends).
A store that's actually busy... For now. I never even thought I'd go into a store barefoot AT ALL this summer, but I've already done that. The store I went in was pretty empty, but I probably came in contact with about a dozen people and a couple salespeople. No big deal.
For me, it's anywhere where people know me. I'm more or less OK everywhere else. For example, at church, lots of folks, especially the younger folk, go barefoot. Even one of our pastors, whose kids are almost perpetually barefoot, is often barefoot. Yet I'm too shy to barefoot it there, except for kicking off my sandals in the pews. The restaurant I go to every Saturday where they know my regular order is another place I haven't gotten the courage for. Oddly enough, when it comes to stores and the like, the busier, the easier it is. I was fine at IKEA on a Saturday afternoon, which is just about the busiest store I can think of. You kind of get lost in the crowd, I guess. Safety in numbers. You're somehow more naked in more intimate settings.
Going to see the doctor and going to different grocery stores. I've only been to one grocery store barefoot, and it's great. My feet get nice and black there
I think you'll find grocery stores vary widely in their accptance of barefooters. In some you'll never be hassled and in some you'll have all sorts of problems. There will even be a wide variance in the same chain. I have been in a Publix in St Pete Beach, Fl. sans shoes many times. No one said a word. I have also found Kroger & Albertson stores to be very barefoot friendly.
My local Albertsons is VERY barefoot friendly. As a matter of fact, about a year ago, I happened to see another barefoot customer the same day I was there. He was asking one of the employees about why the credit union ATM inside the store was out of order. No one cared that he (and I) were barefoot inside the store! This store is also undergoing renovation, so it's a perfect environment to get your soles nice and black.
I shopped barefoot at Kroger in Houston a few times when I was there last fall, and interacted quite a bit with the employees and no one said a thing. On the other hand, a few years ago I was approached and reproached by a security guard at a Safeway in Berkeley, CA, but only when I was almost at the door. He didn't look excessively smart, and said something about there being "broken glass everywhere." Hmm. Why should there be broken glass everywhere and without anyone cleaning it? Unsolvable mystery.
Barefoot grocery shopping has been way more of a problem INSIDE my head than outside. Outside, nobody cares. Inside---hoo, boy! AND IT FEELS GREAT!!!!!!!!!
I'm more comfortable going barefoot out of town where I'm less likely to bump into people I know. I've been barefoot to the local supermarket a few times, and in some of the local shops at the end of the road, and I'm beginning to relax a bit more. I've been invited to a wedding next month - a church ceremony followed by a reception in a country house, and there will be lots of people there that I know. I'd love to go barefoot, and I don't plan to take any shoes with me, as I know I'd just chicken out and put them on!
I just did what I mentioned in my comment from the other day (me living on a very central street in my town, which makes it psychologically harder to go around barefoot): earlier I was going swimming and I decided to do so barefoot on my bike. It's only a mild conquest, since it was past 8 p.m. and very very few people were around. And I was in fact on my bike so I was faster than people's awareness I guess it was easier than expected. Of course, as soon as I opened the front door I ran into a friend of mine and talked to her, but I'm sure she didn't notice. Next conquest: New York?
