The Finest, Funnest, Most Freeing Footwear

Flip-flops were the norm at my SoCal college. On particularly sunny days, campus looked like one giant longboard. When I left for graduate school in New York City, I packed my Havaianas. My mental image of the metropolitan flip-flopper was something vaguely from the early-2000s SamRon-and-Lindsay Lohan era — a certain off-the-rack, louche, bohemian look. Lines from Rufus Wainwright’s song “Poses” came to mind: “Now I’m drunk and wearing flip-flops on Fifth Avenue/Once you’ve fallen from classical virtue/Won’t have a soul for to wake up and hold you.”