Adventures in Outlet Malls

This was a great Saturday.  I went out to the mountains with a few friends today to do a little wine tasting at a north Georgia winery on a LivingSocial coupon.  The excursion was really great.  I highly recommend taking the "cave tour" at Yonah Mountain Vinyards.  The owner, who toured us through the production facilities, shared a lot with us about how they run the production facilities and a few snarky quips.

Not to mention, we got to taste a few really great wines.  I actually bought one (shocking, if you know my opinion of Southeast wineries).  

After our tour, we grabbed lunch at a really good pizza place near Helen, GA and finished up our day at the Dawsonville Outlet Mall.  My goal, which I accomplished, was to get some new polos and work shirts.  I acquired four pretty good new shirts... mission accomplished.  My friends were perusing the outlets in search of some new shoes, and they walked into this store:

Oh, did I mention that my traveling friends were all girls?  Apparently, they made a b-line into this store, loaded with girl shoes (and I had never heard of the place until today).  I spent a few minutes in the store with them as they started to peruse the store, and as I realized that this wasn't going to be a quick trip I told one of the girls that I'd run over to J-Crew to look at stuff and wait for them to join me.  

The trip to J-Crew was not productive.  I saw a lot of stuff that didn't excite me, and I think I looked at everything in the store.  About 20 minutes had passed by, and my friends didn't come yet.  So I went to the Levi's store next door to check out some stuff... found nothing.  Then went back to J-Crew again to wait again.  After a while, I thought that maybe I should go back to the shoe store just to see if the girls were still there.  It had been a while, and I was getting a little worried.  You see, as a guy when I spend time in a clothing store, it's all business.  I thought to myself, how could they be in this shoe store for more than, say, 20 minutes (it was a pretty small store)?  

So, I get back to the shoe store and... you guessed it...

They're still there.  And this is the sight that I saw... and was asked:  "What do you think about these?"

Now, I was thinking:  "That's quite... Interesting ;-)"  And seriously, I don't really have opinions about womens' shoes either, so I think I said that they looked great.  Smart move?  I mean, you see about 5 pairs represented in 3 chicas in this picture... right?  

After 20 or 30 more minutes of trying stuff on, and my going to another mens' shirt store to look for work shirts and returning to find my compadres at the shoe store, decisions were made... some made based on peer pressure, some based on looks, conversations about South Beach with the store manager, and something about Italian cows.  And this was after this many test drives. 

That's the best that I can describe it... 3 girls, 8 documented pairs of shoes.  One hour (my rough estimate).  Decision-making angst... maybe?  

At the end of the day, they did each come away with a prize... as well as me wondering "why do girls need so many pairs of shoes?" ;-)

Or get Soooooo excited about shoes (to the tune of an hour of wackiness).

I'll never know.  

One of life's great mysteries.  

Personally, I like shopping with my female friends; they're a lot more in tune with what looks good (somehow I got talked into buying a pair of "Aviator glasses" - I won't lie, they are cool).  The moral to this story though is, if you're going to shop with girls for fashion consulting, you can expect part of the adventure to be an hour of trying every shoe in a Vince Camutu shoe boutique while, man, you decide how to amuse yourself.  

Now I know why all of those old married guys like those benches :-)