“Give a girl the right shoes,” Marilyn Monroe once said, “and she can conquer the world.”

Here is my story about shoes.
When I first came to San Francisco, I arrived on a one-way ticket. My plan was to continue on to Brazil; Rio De Janeiro was on my mind then, which is it’s own story.

Nevertheless I linger in San Francisco, I rent a place on 3rd Street and Stillman, above a bike messenger station, which was the perfect metaphor in my life, because I was looking everywhere for a message to tell me whether I should stay, or go on, or find a way back to Europe.

One day I went window shopping and ended up in a shoe boutique off Union Square. The salesman was a very nice gentleman who asked me in passing about where I was from and other details of my ‘foreign-ness.’ I was more interested in talking about shoes but I politely answered all his questions, and eventually found what I wanted. These are the shoes of my dreams, I thought. Delicate leather straps, soft metallic leather and the most glamorous heels. Beautiful beyond belief.

Out of one ear I heard the salesman joking. “Yes, they are beautiful and about the same price as an airplane ticket to go back home. So now it’s your decision between one or the other. Which will it be?”

I didn’t give it much thought. I put the shoes back in the box, handed them to the gentleman and said, “I’ll take them.”

And that’s how I came to stay in San Francisco. It became my Land of Oz. And my “ruby slippers” had taken me to where I already was….