It started out with one pair. I was on vacation in Las Vegas and hadn’t brought any shoes that I could wear around the swimming pool. One of the stores in the mall there had a pair of Brazil thongs on sale so I made the purchase for the sake of convenience. And what happened was that I discovered that flip flops can go with almost any outfit.

You don’t really realize this living in San Francisco because no one wears surf thongs anywhere but the beach. But if you head to Vegas or Tucson or Southern California, you’ll see that there are people wearing thongs in every location from restaurants to hiking paths. And as you start to see how different flip flops can look good with different clothes, you realize that you need more than just one pair.

Or at least, that’s what I realized. Before I knew it, I had Havaianas thongs and cheap running-to-the-store thongs and dressy flip flops. And I also had several different colors of the original Brazil thongs that had gotten the whole thing started. Of course, I do still have some other types of shoes in my closet. It’s just not appropriate to wear flip flops to some of the places where I spend time in San Francisco. But when I can get away with thongs, there’s a whole closet full of them for me to choose from.

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