Old Rubbers

I remember those days, okay decades actually - more than 20 years - when I used to hang out with some of my running mates back in the school days. One of our favourite haunts was KOMTAR. It wasn't like we had much choice. Back when megamalls were non-existent, the only place to be was the shopping mall which which formed the base to the tallest building on the island of Penang. The mall was multi-tenanted with Yaohan, then Super KOMTAR being the anchor tenant. Before McD, there was White Castle. The darker side of KOMTAR was the entertainment wing which housed tens of video arcades. I admit that I wasted quite a bit of my pocket money there trying to conquer Raiden, 1945 and Lode Runner (insert the guilty look here). Video arcades were the poor kid's entertainment. We didn't have Atari, Commodore or any of the cool consoles, so on days when we were not tearing down the backlanes of our government quarters in our bikes, my friends and I would be at KOMTAR. Needless to say some punishment rightfully meted out by my father put paid to my excursions.

There was another attraction at KOMTAR - shoe shops. Running shoe shops to be precise. Nike, Brooks and NB were big back then. NBs were way different from those you find today. They were made in the USA, ultra solid and indestructible and their racing series were fantastic - the M625 were my favourites. Nikes were the desire of nearly everyone. The hipsters were always drooling for Michael J Fox's high cut shoes (which he wore in the Back to The Future trilogies) but we runners were always eyeing the Pegasus, the Terra TCs, and the Internationalists. All out of our range of course. RM160 was considered high end back then!

It was only when we started to do some part time jobs during the long school holidays could we afford any of the lower end models. My first serious running shoe was the M625 as I don't count those basic Nike models which hurt my feet so much, which wasn't, to be fair, due to the shoes but the ignorance of the need to break them in before running in them.

So for those who were the '80s kids, this link will bring back some pleasant memories. Shoes back then weren't over-engineered unlike most of today's models. Like they say, oldies are goodies and I'm sure if they're still available today, they can still cut it on the feet of runners today. So on to the link!