Shoes of Lighthaven: A Photo-Investigation

01 Dec, 2025

I was a camp counselor at a science camp for a few years in my teens. Science camp goes for two weeks per cohort, and you were expected to have memorized the names of all twentyish campers within the first three days. This was fairly difficult for me, because I am somewhat face blind.

Thankfully, I had the power of autism on my side. Instead of memorizing the campers' names based on their faces, I would look at what shoes they were wearing, because I like playing attention to clothing and little kids generally only have one pair of indoor shoes. The fake purple converse was Ashley, the blue spider-man sneakers was Jeremy, and so on.

I continue to really enjoy people watching, especially in particularly stylish cities, and paying close attention to what shoes people wear. Sadly, this hot tip wrt name/shoe matching generally doesn't work in adult life, because adults often have more than one pair of shoes.

Except at Lighthaven.

This isn't just because the people here are disproportionately likely to only have one pair of shoes (though that is also a factor)! It is also because often, people are flying in, and for some reason people do not prioritize footwear in their luggage space.

I however am kind of an outlier.

idk, I think five pairs of shoes is a reasonable number of pairs of shoes to pack for a 30 day writing retreat in a place where the weather never changes.

I have lost count of the number of times I've been at Lighthaven, and I've noticed recurring patterns in the kinds of footwear that I see in the space, across events. Below are some of my observations, if you want to enter my twisted world.

Overrepresented

In a lot of ways, the Shoes of Lighthaven are not so different from the Shoes of San Francisco. It's a techie area with a casual vibe, and you'll see your fair share of Ons and Hokas, Doc Martens and doc-likes, generic black sneakers, and half-casual lace up leather shoes with white rubber soles.

I'm not confident that it is that similar to the Shoes of Berkeley, the more granolaish and studenty city that the campus is actually located in. More research will need to be done on the Shoes of Berkeley before I can say more on this.

What I can say is that there are specific kinds of shoes that are markedly more common inside Lighthaven than they are in the outside world.

Greige Outdoorsy Shoes

These appear to be the Adidas Sambas of the rationalists, i.e. >5% of the total campus are wearing them at all times. You will often see two or more pairs of them in conversation together. A pair of them who are here currently are a married couple. These aesthetic abominations are sadly a sign to go closer because the people wearing these shoes often have good takes, for example prioritizing comfort and practicality over aesthetics when it comes to shoe purchases or packing.

Wide Toeboxes and Other Affordances

Wider toeboxes are kind of subtle but it's everywhere on campus once you begin looking for them. I don't think the people on campus are disproportionately likely to have wide feet, but perhaps they are disproportionately likely to notice if some article of clothing is uncomfortable, and then do problem solving.

A sub-category here are shoes that are like, also doing other functional stuff, like having bendy or ultra thin soles:

Or having toes:

This conversation is very likely fire.

Sometimes it's more subtle. My Vans are the wider model, but I like them precisely because you can't tell:

If you recall those "generic black sneakers" from the second image, I have been politely informed by the owner that those are "actually zero-drop wide toebox black sneakers that are aftermarket modified to have elastic laces."

This is how a certain pair of shoes, the Nike Motiva GORE-TEX, was described in the Inkhaven slack:

It's considered one of the best walking/running shoes according to many reviews (I already had one pair) and Goretex is more than five times as water resistant (28 000 mm hydrostatic head) compared to the best waxed cotton technology of the past (~5 000 mm) and they are breathable (!) and lighter

They... just look like generic dad-coded black Nikes:

The wearer of them confirmed that it was indeed like "wearing a cloud".

More Formal Shoes

Compared to the rest of the Bay Area, you are more likely to see people wearing nice formal shoes, for the sheer love of the game.

Very Distinctive Shoes

You will also see very cool shoes, with way higher frequency than you see them in the outside world. Some are loud and attention grabbing:

Some have interesting subtle detail if you pay attention (try to count the number of unique stitch lengths on those sandals):

Some are very goth:

These shoes are worn by people with Opinions about aesthetics.

Underrepresented

Trendy Sneakers

No one here wears the generic casual shoes from the established brands. You'd be hard pressed to find people in Converse, and canvas shoes (Keds, Vans, etc) are on the whole quite rare. I don't see Uggs, which is a blessing, except their slippers but those are alright.

I have not seen a single pair of Nike Jordans or All-Stars. I thought this was a pair of crisp white Air Force Ones, making this person an exception, but upon closer inspection they turned out to be Ons:

Here's a pic I snapped on the bus of some college kids, which kind of perfectly represents the kind of shoes in this category that you will not see at Lighthaven despite them being fucking everywhere else:

Not-too-scuffed Air Force Ones (mostly hidden behind the pole), red Converse, Nike Dunks.

Sambas

Okay, I'm going to sound like an insane person, but from the vantage point of November 2025, it seems like such an important portent of something that no one is wearing the on-trend suede minimalist sneaker. In cities like Toronto and NYC, it does genuinely seem to me like a significant fraction (like... 3%? If you walk around a busy area, you'll see 3+ pairs in your field of view at all times) of the population are wearing Adidas Sambas, the It Shoe of the past two years.¹

There is one resident who's rocking a pair of them, but his don't count!!! They're from an older line, and don't have the contrast T-shaped toe cap that defines the on-trend version. Also, his are the most beat up pair of Sambas that I've ever seen, whereas all the ones on the street tend to be pristine: top: the Sambas that are on trend. bottom: this person's well worn pair.

Incidentally, you are also much more likely to see damaged shoes (e.g. with visible fraying and holes) at Lighthaven.

The Slip-On

This is a funny one. I am told that this sort of slip-on is very popular with rationalists because they are more comfortable than they are ugly which is saying a lot:

But you won't actually see them much at Lighthaven, because the people who wear these shoes are generally sufficiently rat-saturated through living in group houses with a bunch of other rationalists, and they generally can't be arsed to make it to campus to meet new people.

Takeaways

Practically every single day of this 30-day writing retreat, I have spent some amount of time photographing people's feet, and everyone has been really nice to me about this because it is not the weirdest thing that is done here. It is probably not even the weirdest thing done by me here?

So what do the Shoes of Lighthaven reveal? You've got people who've optimized for foot biomechanics, and people with strong but idiosyncratic aesthetic sensibilities, and very few people wearing conventional trendy sneakers. As far as I can tell, the foot biomechanic stuff and the weird aesthetic stuff isn't some sort of ingroup status ladder that supplanted the global one either; people are just wearing the stuff they want to wear, either based on practical metrics or their own personal taste.

To reach a little bit, I think this indicates that people who show up at Lighthaven tend to either be oblivious to or opt out of status games, to a surprising and significant degree. I brought five pairs of shoes to the month-long retreat, but I did so for my own gratification, and I am under no delusion that my marginally more cohesive outfits make me any cooler or higher status here.

Also, I'm really not that different from everyone else here. Of the five pairs that I brought, one leans biomechanical: the running shoes were considered among the best running shoes for people with wider feet as of a few years ago, when I bought them. And the other four pairs (classic Hi-top Vans, Solovair derby boots, Arizona Birkenstocks, and G.H. Bass Weejuns) fit neatly into my own very idiosyncratic rule for what shoes are the best to wear. Claude was able to figure out the rule, I wonder if you can as well :)

#blog #longform #photojournal