Dennis RomeroYou're clubbing it hardcore and having a pretty good time, but your sky-high Louboutin heels are are pain in the ass or, at least, the feet.
Your options are to take that wedding-cake image of a princess-in-pumps and completely destroy it by barefooting it on the dirty sidewalks of the Cahuenga Corridor. Or you can suffer through it and end up having some perverted podiatrist handle your footsies and tell you they're way to precious for stilettos ever again.
Which is it? Ah, there's now an emerging third option:
Rollasole. The compact, roll-up, ballet-type flat is being sold out of club-based vending machines in Las Vegas and its native U.K.
Low rollers.; Credit: Rollasole
Now, Ashley Ross and Lindsay Klimitz, the Vegas-based duo that brought the roll-up “emergency footwear” concept stateside, has its sights set on this heels-rich clubbing market of L.A.
Ready for L.A.; Credit: Rollasole
Personally, we're against it: We like platform heels at all costs. However, we don't happen to actually wear them — at any cost.
Our female colleague Simone Wilson, then, let us in on a secret: The reality of clubbing in heels is that a woman will inevitably end up with filthy, unattractive feet after she goes barefoot at the end of the night to terminate the torture inflicted by dancing in platforms. Klimitz agrees:
Add some drinks and dancing into the mix and a few hours later you either take them off and walk barefoot or you suffer through the pain.
Rollasole is a fair compromise. Ross and Klimitz tell us the $20 shoes are reusable and come with a convenient “heel carrying bag.” Despite the price, well-heeled celebs Hayden Panettiere and Heidi Klum have been seen wearing them.
The vending-machine shoes are available at Vanity nightclub at the Hard Rock in Vegas and they're headed soon to the RPM club at the Tropicana, the duo says.
Ross and Klimitz want L.A. club owners to know that its machines can feature custom advertising. Optional club logos on the heel carrying bags and on the insoles of the shoes are also a possibility. In other words, there are branding, marketing and advertising opportunities here. And women can tell the world where their heels have been.
The first stop in L.A. for Rollasole is scheduled to happen in the second week of January when its latest vending machine hits SBE venue Colony. And SBE is the king of club chains in L.A., so if they can make it there, they can make it anywhere.
The brand's reveal at Colony will coincide with the 69th Golden Globes. Rollasole will be in the house, at the awards' celebrity gift suite.
And, apparently, Los Angeles needs these shoes.
Another negative aspect of wearing super-hot, higher-than-thou footwear: Perverts. Rollasoles lets ladies escape the creepiness of the L.A. douche with Ninja-like precision. No clickity-clop warning to let the guys know you're strutting by, apparently.
“Going out in L.A. is the worst,” Ross tells us. “Walking those sidewalks of Hollywood is pretty scary.”
Klimitz: “You get whistled at.”
Wasn't us.
[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]
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