"The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing."
--United States Code Title 36 Chapter 10

"When I first began teaching Trio A to anyone who wanted to learn it--skilled, unskilled, professional, fat, old, sick, amateur--and gave tacit permission to anyone who wanted to teach it to teach it, I envisioned myself as a post-modern dance evangelist bringing movement to the masses, watching with Will Rogers-like benignity the slow, inevitable evisceration of my elitist creation."
--Yvonne Rainer

Converse Chuck Taylor All Star sneakers are worn by adolescent boys and by prepubescent girls, by Garbage Pail Kids, by garbage men, by janitors. They are worn in hailstorms and in the month of January, by either half of a December-May romance, by the young-at-heart and by the heart-broken, by fools in love and by village idiots, by Mr. T and by Tony Danza and by mohawk'd punk poseurs with attitudes copped from Who's The Boss?. Dennis the Menace wears Converse sneakers. Bart Simpson appears to wear Converse sneakers but his don't have the rubber half-moon hanging low and ripe over the toe. Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes wears red low-tops; Screech, red high-tops. There are pink Converse sneakers and Converse sneakers with pink-and-white stripes. Some are gold and some are orange and others are mustard or banana or Caribbean blue. They are a basketball sneaker. They are a sneaker for hipsters, would-be hipsters, once-were hipsters, the hipless, the hopeful, the high-strung, the downtrodden, the upbeat, the beatniks. They are shoes that transcend social boundaries and they are shoes that deteriorate delicately, precisely, like concrete cracked by a single dandelion.

The grommets of a new Converse sneaker gleam too brightly, the piping flows too flawlessly, the laces are a too perfect 9/32 inch wide, the tongue is not yet churlishly askance. The ideal Converse sneaker has lost all but one of the diamonds on the sole, is browned with sweat around the mouth, no longer protects your big toe from the travails of long walks in the snow and/or rocking out. If you wear Converse sneakers you should that know it is a fine line between pride and shame and a finer line between sincerity and irony and that the Converse sneaker has not enough traction in the world to protect you on slippery slopes. You should also know that no shoe goes better with a pair of jeans or a three-piece suit. You should choose your Converse wisely. Some people like the traditional black-and-white high-top because it reminds them of dunking a basketball or of destroying a gee-tar with a single kick to the neck. Others have a pair for every occasion, maybe the red-and-green for a midnight "Messiah" and then a pastel for Easter, maybe mud low-tops or cinnamon high-tops or hot chocolate knee-highs (knee-highs!) for apple-picking, chestnut-roasting and leaf-raking in autumn. Plaid-patterned for barn-raisings. Flame-patterned for hell-raising.

We all pick our vices. With the Converse sneaker you can sin hard and sin well without the track marks or the hangover; the only vestige of your vagary will be intoxicating, inescapable foot odor. There are shoes for all kinds of indulgences and promiscuities, but no shoe is quite as potent as the Converse sneaker--and certainly no shoe delights and disturbs quite like the Converse Chuck Taylor All Star low-top stars-and-bars Oxford sneaker. It is beautiful. It is ugly. The stars-and-bars sneaker has all the vocabulary of the typical Converse ("rugged protective toe guard," "under-stitched web back stay," "shock-absorbing rubber insole," "high front quarter design") plus all the effervescence of Old Glory: there are four horizontal, alternating stripes of red-and-white stretching from ankle to toe joint and a blue tongue littered with stars. It has brick-colored soles and an "All Star" heel patch cast in an insouciant shade of cherry. White laces. Blue piping. Piping the color of the rocket's glare. The stars are not the .0616 of the sneaker's width that they are supposed to be, the canvas is easily scuffed with the dirt of everyday ass-kicking, but the sneaker is nonetheless undeniably, wholeheartedly, dispiritingly American. After all, the white still signifies purity and innocence, the red still signifies hardiness and valor, and the blue--even as it fades from sun and from mud puddles--still signifies vigilance, perseverance, and justice. What would Betsy Ross do? Would she be prepared to rock?

This is the history of America. In 1777 Congress resolved that the flag should have thirteen stripes and thirteen stars and the colors of the Union Jack. In 1921 Chuck Taylor wanted his fast breaks flashy and his fade-away jump shots radiant. In 1923 he stuck his name on a pair of sneakers, took a puff from his pipe, and rolled across America in a Cadillac. He promoted and he played golf and he sweet-talked coaches. In 1930 Jasper Johns was born and in 1958 he painted the American flag in thick encaustic. It was pop and it was populist. In 1970 Yvonne Rainer wanted to oomph. She tied a flag around her neck and then undressed and then danced her dance Trio A, so it was flag and flesh, just flesh and flag: she breathed and it breathed. In 1992 Converse All Stars unveiled the stars-and-bars design. You can wear your stars-and-bars sneakers without socks. You can wear your stars-and-bars sneakers when you are dancing Trio A.

United States Code Title 36 Chapter 10 says, "The flag should never be fastened, displayed, used, or stored in such a manner as to permit it to be easily torn, soiled, or damaged in any way." United States Code Title 36 Chapter 10 also says, "The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground." But these are sneakers! Made for walking, running, skipping, jumping, dancing, kicking the air at each splash of the drum kit! Imagine: soldiers taking to battle with only a fretless bass or a few, shimmering power chords; thousands of emboldened patriots, hands on hearts, eyes cast foot-wards, as the oceans white with foam reach melodic crescendo; Abraham Lincoln in top hat, neck beard, and Converse sneakers. America! She lives! That is all there is to it--a shoe for punk rock (which is dead), a shoe with ventilating eyelets (to keep your feet breathing), a shoe that can hardly withstand rain. Purity, valor, and perseverance. 1