I bought a pair of Dayton boots yesterday. They are damned expensive and I was hesitant. I stood there in their shop for a good hour wearing the boots and walking around the store looking at the artifacts that 62 years of making boots by hand in Vancouver produces. There's a photo of a sign that used to hang outside of many of the bars in Vancouver that decreed "No Daytons Allowed." Apparently in the old days Dayton boots were worn by hooligans and goons and a pair of Daytons wasn't considered broken in until there was blood on them and the way one broke in a pair of Daytons was to wear them to a bar and start picking fights. They were also standard issue for those guys that used to deliver milk door to door and you know there must be a lot of miles built into a pair of boots if it's up to that job. That's the pair I bought, the "Driver."
But it wasn't an easy decision to make. Like I said, they aren't cheap. I could have bought two "good" pairs of boots for the price of these. And to be honest I didn't care much about bar fights and milk men though it's nice to know there's a history to something but it wasn't the street cred I was looking for. What I really wanted was a good pair of boots. That's it.
I suppose I could have bought the two "good" pairs of boots for the same price and been ahead but somehow it wouldn't be the same. The Daytons are handmade here in Vancouver by real people. Though I'm sure they make a reasonable living, and everybody deserves to do so, you get the impression they aren't about making a ton of money, they really just care about making the best boots they can. They offer a life time warranty on their workmanship which means if the stitching comes out or the pull tab comes off the heel they will fix it for free. And they've been known to send back complete orders of leather because it wasn't up to their standards. I like that. You don't see that enough these days, standards for quality that is.
I've been wearing these boots around the house. There's a process involved in getting the boots to fit just like there's a process to making them. Being real leather they will stretch. The girl in the store says it like she's said it a hundred times before and will probably say it a hundred times again, "they should be tight, they are real leather and they will stretch but once they do they will fit very well. Trust me."
It's a company like Dayton that has helped me make the decision to make bicycles, or frames at least, one at a time. It's not that there isn't enough bike manufacturers out there and some of them are actually quite good, many may be much better than I am. It's not that I think I can make a better bike. But behind each bike there's me, a real person who cares about making a good bike one at a time.
Just like at Dayton where there are probably "better" ways to make a boot out of synthetic NASA derived plastics and polymers, the boots could be lighter, or prettier being made out of laser cut panels and adorned with bells and whistles and kevlar wear patches or whatever, or made by large machines chugging a pair of boots out the bum end every 27 seconds, I'm sure there are "better" ways to make a bike out of carbon or plastic or aluminum, or by robots, and with hydroforming and dampening inserts and integrated bits and definitely more exotic paint jobs and I've owned these bikes, I've paid for the paint, gotten distracted by the ad copy, bought the technology. In the end the bikes that have made me the happiest are the honest ones, the ones without glamour but with a solid soul and these are the bikes that tend to stick around for a while.
In the twenty four hours since I've bought these boots I've slept for a bit, had a shower, went for a walk with my kid to the grocery store, and the rest of the time I've been walking around the house wearing these boots, becoming familiar with them, feeling them slowly change shape just a little bit as they use the warmth of my feet to mold the leather accordingly. I feel good about these boots just like I feel good about my bikes. I like that I will probably have both for quite some time. How about you?
