Designer Donates Sneakers for Border Run

[SPEtactical]

Designer Donates Sneakers for Border Run




By ELLIOT SPAGAT
The Associated Press
Thursday, November 17, 2005; 4:04 AM


SAN DIEGO -- The high-top sneakers cost $215 at a San Diego boutique, but the designer is giving them away to migrants before they cross to this side of the U.S.-Mexico border.

These are no ordinary shoes.

A compass and flashlight dangle from one shoelace. The pocket in the tongue is for money or pain relievers. A rough map of the border region is printed on a removable insole.

They are red, white and green, the colors of the Mexican flag. On the back ankle, a drawing of Mexico's patron saint of migrants.

On this side of the border, the shoes sit in art collections or the closets of well-heeled sneaker connoisseurs. On the other side, in Tijuana, it's a utilitarian affair: Immigrants to be are happy to have the sturdy, lightweight shoes for the hike _ or dash _ into the United States.

Their designer is Judi Werthein, an Argentine artist who moved to New York in 1997 _ legally, she notes.

On recent evening in Tijuana, after giving away 50 pairs at a migrant shelter, Werthein waved the insole and pointed to Interstate 8, the main road between San Diego and Phoenix.

"This blue line is where you want to go," Werthein, 38, said in Spanish.

"Good luck! You're all very courageous," she told the cheering crowd of about 50 men huddled in a recreation room after dinner.

"God bless you!" several cried back.

Werthein has concluded that shoes are a border crosser's most important garment.

"The main problem that people have when they're crossing is their feet," Werthein. "If people are going to cross anyway, at least this will make it safer."

Only 1,000 pairs of the "Brinco" sneakers (it means "Jump" in Spanish) have been made _ in China, for $17 each. The shoes were introduced in August at inSite, an art exhibition in San Diego and Tijuana whose sponsors include nonprofit foundations and private collectors.

Benefactors put up $40,000 for the project; Werthein gets a $5,000 stipend, plus expenses.

Some say Werthein is encouraging illegal immigration _ but she rejects the criticism, saying people will cross with or without her shoes.

Eloisa Haudenschild, who displays a pair of the sneakers at her resplendent San Diego home, said the shoes portray an uncomfortable reality about the perils of crossing the border.

"It's a reality that we don't like to look at," she said. "That's what an artist points out."

Across the border, several curious migrants waiting for sunset along a cement river basin approached Werthein as she took white shoe boxes out of a sport utility vehicle. One man already wore a dirty pair of Brincos. Another, Felipe de Jesus Olivar Canto, slipped into a size 11 and said he would use them instead of his black leather shoes.

"These are much more comfortable for hiking," said Olivar Canto. He said he was heading for $6.75-an-hour work installing doors and windows in Santa Ana, about 90 miles north of border. "The ones I have are more dressy."

From there, Werthein went to Casa del Migrante, a Tijuana shelter that will receive a share of the proceeds from Brincos sold in the United States.

"Does it have a sensor to alert us to the Border Patrol?" joked Javier Lopez, 33, who said he had a $10-an-hour job hanging drywall waiting for him in Denver.

To research the best design over two years, Werthein interviewed shoe designers, migrants, aid workers, even an immigrant smuggler. She joined the Mexican government's Grupo Beta migrant-aid society on long border hikes. She heard from a Salvadoran woman in Tijuana who said she was kidnapped and raped by her smuggler.

Based on those interviews, she added a pocket _ migrants told her they were often robbed. She also added the flashlight _ many cross at night.

Some get lost _ hence, the compass and map.

"If you get lost," she told the men at the shelter, "just go north."

In downtown San Deigo, a boutique called Blends displays the shoes on a black pedestal. Werthein says Blends and Printed Matter, a store in Manhattan, have sold about 350 pair.

"I wouldn't wear them and I wouldn't want my husband to wear them," said Blends browser Antonieta LaRussa, 28. "But the cause is awesome. There's so much opposition to immigration. She's looking at it from the other side of the fence and asking why."

[Prometheus]

:eek: Anything I could say at this point would be obvious and reduntantly echoed by no less than 10 other members. *Sigh*

[Redman]

I like your idea DC, but you almost forgot the most important part! We need this man to to secure southern Texas JUST IN CASE any of them make it through.

http://tinypic.com/funkfc.jpg

If he is not available the job, he must be replaced with someone equally as intimidating. :D

[ExUSPP]

I was just going to post this. It looks like I am 4 days too late. :cool:

[jmur5074]

I like your idea DC, but you almost forgot the most important part! We need this man to to secure southern Texas JUST IN CASE any of them make it through.

http://tinypic.com/funkfc.jpg

If he is not available the job, he must be replaced with someone equally as intimidating. :D

Wow....Chuck Norris is MY Hero!!!!

[Cat_Doc]

I want to get a pair of these shoes and walk in front of Border Patrol agent! :D

Jeez, these liberal tards out there don't even realize they are putting a beacon on the illegals. "Come grab me, I am an idiot illegal alien who chose to wear these stupid shoes!"

[cntryboy0531]

I want to get a pair of these shoes and walk in front of Border Patrol agent! :D

Jeez, these liberal tards out there don't even realize they are putting a beacon on the illegals. "Come grab me, I am an idiot illegal alien who chose to wear these stupid shoes!"

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.. Don't let the liberal's know.. :D

[Don Nadie]

I want to get a pair of these shoes and walk in front of Border Patrol agent! :D

Jeez, these liberal tards out there don't even realize they are putting a beacon on the illegals. "Come grab me, I am an idiot illegal alien who chose to wear these stupid shoes!"

Ahhh the memories. This reminds me of the time that I caught this group at midnight in San Diego by following one of their number who was wearing those shoes with the lights that blink every time you step. They could give those tards winged sandals that fly and they would still eff it up.
BTW love the moat, nuke idea. I think you should be the new Border Czar.
Don

[Ginganinja]

Soooo, would wearing these shoes be PC, RS or whatever it is to grab them and ask a few pointed questions about green cards and suchlike????

[Creeker]

... A Grand idea... and would save some manpower costs in the future...

Hit up Walmart for a thousand Chinese-cheapie hiking boots and airdrop them all over the illegal crossing staging areas... after you tuck a cheapie tracking device inside of the insole. You catch those, toss the same shoes back over the border... an infinite reusable life until the illegals catch on... then do the same with bottled water, etc.

Of course, it would help if the INS actually had some air resources.

BTW, when I was down around Sierra Vista at after dusk, I could swear that there was a stationary light fairly high in the sky, but I couldn't tell what it was on and forgot about it the next morning. Does the INS have some stationary monitoring blimps in the sky down there? I thought I had read that they did at some point. That was the only possible explaination for the light I could come up with, since we were still so far from Roswell at the time. :rolleyes:

[Sleuth]

Must have been the 'radar' blimp (tethered at Fort Hacucha). Equipped with down looking radar for unauthorized flights into the US.


(And you are not that far from Roswell, in Galatic terms.)

[Valor55]

"Good luck! You're all very courageous," she told the cheering crowd of about 50 men huddled in a recreation room after dinner.

Some say Werthein is encouraging illegal immigration _ but she rejects the criticism, saying people will cross with or without her shoes.

Hmmmmm sounds like she is encouraging them to me. Too bad "accessory to illegal immigration" isn't a felony.

[Migra1896]

I know this thread is old, but we just caught a group east of El Paso the same way... Pretty funny.

[Ironhead]

On the back ankle, a drawing of Mexico's patron saint of migrants.

Mexico's patron saint of migrants ?!? I never heard of such a thing :rolleyes: