The last pair of Salomon Vortex on the web

Some of you may know I take photo of shoes I own. Well not all the shoes, but the interesting ones. I mainly write about the sporty type shoes, but I may soon expand this to all my shoes - as any shoe person may say - every shoe has its own story.

This post will be about a shoe that was made about 10 years ago, but has long stopped being made - the Salomon Vortex. Thanks to the guys at macski.com, I believe I have the last pair that was available on the Internet. I've looked for other pairs, but cannot find them. 10 years ago, Salomon was an emerging company in Australia. They had already established themselves in Europe, and were well known to skiers as manufacturers of very good quality boots, bindings and skis, but they were attempting to establish themselves in other markets. I first noticed them when I was looking around for a pair of replacement in-line skates. My Rollerblade Aeros broke in the cuff (after about 6 years of use), and I wanted something that was as comfortable. I found the Salomon TR9 Custom - a skate that was even far more comfortable than the Aeros (I may dedicate a post to these skates in the future). The reason for the high level of comfort was the Custom heat-molded foot liner in the skate itself. Those skates were so good, I went onto buy the Salomon ST9 Custom skate. This eventually lead the purchase of the Salomon Vortex shoes.

The pros of the Vortex:

1. Good solid stiff shoe - useful for walking, casual, pickup games of football, cycling, and skateboarding.
2. Long lasting sole.
3. Unique lacing system - pull the lace loop and push the lace lock down. This would take around 2 seconds per shoe to secure onto your foot.
4. Easy to keep clean sole.
5. Good level of comfort.

The cons of the Vortex:

1. Not ideal for running, or any court sports.
2. If you did not engage the lacing system in a certain way, you would wear out the lace loops, and hence render the shoe useless. This would take over a year - even with standard daily use.
3. Does take some "breaking-in" to get it to a comfortable level - around 1 week of daily use.
4. High cost when it was originally available.

These days, Salomon still make shoes, but not the Vortex.

I recently met Sunny Boy, and he knows his shoes - mainly Globe shoes. I've asked him to see if he can offer me a similar shoe in US size 11. Until then, I'm looking on the Internet for deadstocks of Salomon Vortex shoes.