Dr. Martens

Once upon a time, a working-class shoe was something to wear

I threw away fifteen pairs of Dr. Martens. That's not hyperbole—fifteen pairs of boots and shoes accumulated since about 2017 in a misguided attempt to recapture something that, as it turns out, doesn't exist anymore.

The immediate cause was pain. Simple as that. After wearing Docs most of my teenage life, starting in the early 1990s, I returned to the b…