La Calle de Hortaleza is one of the two main north-south drags that slice through this barrio, Chueca. A narrow old street, lined with shops of all kinds, a street that's been looking kind of tired from years and years of heavy use. When I returned to Madrid from the States on January 2, I discovered that during my absence Hortaleza had begun receiving a facelift. More than a facelift: the city government has undertaken to completely re-do the calle, virtually end to end -- tearing street and sidewalks, laying new surfaces down, planting young trees.
The street runs from the traffic circle at Alonso Martinez, a point in Chueca's northern line, all the way to Gran Vía, Chueca's southern line, and the work has thrown through traffic completely out of whack. Compounding that, the work has proceeded along at a leisurely pace, beginning at one end, heading slowly toward the other. Meaning that from week to week, one can never be exactly sure which portions of the street/sidewalks will be getting ripped apart and put back together. So that motorists who don't know any better discover themselves hopelessly boxed in, in a warren of narrow, one-way streets, in long lines with other hapless, increasingly desperate motorists trying to make the simple trip from point A to point B but forced to do so by way of points F, K, L, Ñ, S, V and Y. Producing plenty of horn concertos, depending on how badly traffic gets snarled up.
The upside: a lot of la Calle de Hortaleza has been unexpectedly turned into a pedestrian way, drastically changing the character of that part of the neighborhood. Where high concentrations of cars, trucks and buses once passed, people now walk -- slowly, in relaxed fashion, or more quickly, in transit. Singly, in couples, in families or groups, arm in arm, hand in hand, or occupied with bags of goods bought in the January sales. During the daytime hours workers do their thing, pedestrians moving around them. Come 5 or 6 p.m., the workers melt away, the street is taken over by regular folk, by the sound and motion of their passage.
This last Monday around 6 p.m.: I strode down Hortaleza on the way to meet a friend down near Gran Vía. It remains light here until around 7 p.m. this time of year, between shadows cast by the buildings and store lights coming on the street had a nice feeling of twilight, with people walking in and out of tiendas or heading home from work. Couples strolled along talking, kids laughed and conversed loudly. At some point, the sound of distinctive footsteps caught my idle attention. Coming from a guy on the sidewalk to my left, nearly parallel to me, moving at nearly the same speed. I glanced at his feet, discovered he was wearing a pair of what were essentially Beatle boots -- beautiful buggers, done in suede, looking new. Boots that made my little heart jump.
I can't explain exactly why, but I've wanted a pair of boots like that for years. Years and years and years. Ever since I remember seeing them in photos of the Beatles when I was teeny. Ever since I saw a version of them on Bob Dylan's feet on the cover of The Freewheeling Bob Dylan, again when I was teeny. Too teeny for footwear that grown-up, especially in a family that didn't have $$$$ to toss around on frivolous clothing. So I resigned myself to never owning a pair of those beautiful buggers, gradually forgot about them. Until sometime back in the '80s when something brought them to mind -- maybe a photo of an alternative band in which someone sported a pair. And I began wanting them all over again. A wanting that took me into shoe stores, footwear joints of all kinds around the Boston area. I searched on and off for years, without success. Until this week, there on la Calle de Hortaleza.
If you've read many earlier entries in this journal, you may be aware that I often sport black, pointy boots. Not your usual footwear in this part of the world. Nice boots, with a great look -- compared to the genuine item, though, to my personal holy grail, merely very pleasing substitutes.
I was debating stopping the guy to ask him where he'd found this pair when he stepped into a store and disappeared. I was late to meet my friend, after a moment's hesitation I kept going. Chueca, especially my part of Chueca, is packed with footwear stores, in fact with clothing shops of all kinds. Loads of 'em. So I decided the time had come to recommence the footwear hunt I wrote about here a couple of months back, this time with a narrower focus. And during the course of the week, I began haunting shoestore windows, trawling for Beatle boots.
I returned from an intercambio earlier this evening shortly after six -- on emerging from the Metro I discovered that the barrio was alive with people shopping for shoes. A block or two from here is an area that is positively infested with shops dealing in footwear and handbags -- they were all open, highly unusual for a Saturday evening. (Most shops close for the weekend at 2 p.m. on Saturday -- maybe because of the sales month, with people out and slavering to buy, stores remained open, raking in euros long past their normal Saturday hours.) I went in and out of ten or fifteen shops, I passed slowly by many more tienda windows, glancing over the contents with laserlike intent. With no result to this point, though passing time in the company of many happy people, in the company of many lovely, stylish Spanish women.
There have been a stray two or three moments when I kicked myself with my current pointy footwear for not going back and dragging the info out of the guy about where his boots came from. But that gets me nowhere, and it's actually difficult to kick oneself where one should actually kick oneself, so I haven't wasted much time in that fashion. I'll just keep looking.
One of these days I'll strike gold, my feet and I will be very pleased.