What Did He Just Say?

I wasn’t expecting to find a connection between Naang Boots and hip-hop while working on boot designs the other day. But one line in a Czarface track brought back a memory from more than 20 years ago, right around the time I started getting serious about my feet.

It’s a six-degrees-of-separation kind of story, so stick with me.

I Was Trying to Strengthen My Feet

Back then, I was fresh out of the Army and starting my career in telecom. I spent my days climbing ladders, poles, and towers, and my feet were taking a beating. I had some wide lineman boots, but they were anything but anatomical. I didn’t even know that was a footwear concept yet.

I’d started doing basic exercises to strengthen my feet, but I felt like I was hitting a wall. I wanted to find better options.

By that point, I’d been training in martial arts for more than a decade, so I reached out to someone I knew from that world. Donald Wong owned a martial arts equipment shop in Boston’s Chinatown. I’d met him a few times in the late ’90s and early 2000s and remembered that his shop carried all kinds of unusual training equipment.

I stopped in, looked through a few things designed specifically for strengthening the feet, and placed an order. Donald told me everything should arrive during the week.

I was living in Rhode Island and working Monday through Friday, so I asked if I could drive up the following weekend to collect it. He told me to meet him at his family’s restaurant instead, since he’d be working there that weekend.

That restaurant was Kowloon.

This Was The Start

If you grew up around New England, there’s a decent chance you know it. Kowloon is a massive tiki-style American-Chinese restaurant in Saugus, Massachusetts. As a lifelong pro wrestling fan, I definitely knew it. Wrestlers would stop in after shows around Boston, and the walls were covered with their photos.

So the following weekend, I drove up, had lunch, wandered around looking at wrestling history, and picked up my foot-training gear.

Donald spent some time explaining how often I should train my feet and showed me a few exercises I could gradually work my way up to. He also handed me a pair of kung fu shoes to try. They had a surprisingly natural, almost anatomical shape.

Before I left, he showed me some of the most memorable photos on the walls and introduced me to a few family members working that day, including his brother, Andy.

Looking back, that afternoon played a real part in what became an obsession with building stronger, healthier feet. Two decades later, on the other side of the planet, I’d co-found Naang Boots with that same interest in how footwear fits and lets our feet move.

Which brings us to the hip-hop connection.

What Did I Just Hear?

Recently, I was at home in my studio, working on new boot designs and listening to the Czarface collaboration with Tom Hardy, who records as Frankie Pulitzer. The song “Brothers Grimm” came on, and Esoteric dropped this line:

“Saugus Wing Champion, how long to Kowloon? Shout-out to Andy Wong.”

My head snapped up, What did he just say?

Then I remembered Esoteric is from Boston. Of course the reference made sense. But I wasn’t expecting to hear Saugus, a relatively unknown town from Massachusetts, Kowloon Restaurant, and the name of my friend’s brother I met that day while sitting in Bangkok designing boots.

Suddenly, I was thinking about that afternoon again. Donald talking me through the exercises. The unusual half-round foot-training implements I’d bought from him. Those almost foot-shaped kung fu shoes he gave me, which I wore for years until they finally fell apart.

When I went to collect that equipment, I was just a telecom guy trying to stop his feet from taking such a beating. I had no idea I’d eventually design anatomical boots, much less that I’d be doing it in Thailand.

And I certainly didn’t expect a Czarface track to bring me back to lunch at Kowloon.

I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Now I’m wondering whether I can find another pair of those kung fu shoes.

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