I recently had to buy my first pair of Nikes. It was a sad day, but the selection of decent tennis shoes here is sorely limited. In fact, Nikes were the only ones in the store that day.

It hit me hard when I saw that Nike and Reebook had started taking over hockey as well. I've always tried to avoid the big brands (although I do have a thing for adidas, I have to say).

New Blance in one of the few shoe companies that it committed to keeping manufacturng in the US. I have owned many pair of New Balance but a few weeks ago when I needed a new pair of running shoes, the New Balance pair the sales person showed me was $120. I just cant justify paying that much for a pair of shoes, which I am willing to bet have less than $5 of material in them. I didn't even consider Nikes, and ended up with a pair of Mizunos at $95, which is the most I have ever paid for shoes.

I was at a golf outing and one of the sponsors gave eveyone a sleeve of Nike balls....The ones that go $40 to the dozen.

When we got to the 2nd hole, the pond hole ( fairway winds around the pond) we had to wait for the four ahead to play their watered shots.
All of us hate Nike so we had a wager to see who could hit the first ball across the pond, about 400 yards. Suffice to say no one won the bet, but we knew that when started pounding those Nikes into the water.

My sister bought me a pair of New Balance and sure enough ''Made in China'' under the tongue -I thought the running coach from Oregon came up with Nike's Waffle design in the 70's-as for branching out -Nike steals every innovation and wears the patent holder down in court until tthey sell the rights-typical humongous corp. nonsense .