Tuesday, August 9, 2011

The TOMs Tap - Punch Buggy for Hipsters?

When I first wrote my blog post on TOMS rip-off Bobs shoes, my other half expressed some doubts about the claim that I see upwards of half-a-dozen pairs around the streets of the Bay Area on a daily basis. Yesterday, I had a chance to prove him wrong. BARTing from our home in Oakland to downtown San Francisco, and then taking Muni into the Sunset District for a doctor's appointment, we must have seen at least 5 TOMS owners, and as many on the way back.

It was waiting for the N-Judah that he came up with a brilliant idea: a new game in the vein of our childhood fav "punch buggy" (or, as he calls it, "slug bug"). He suggested something like "TOMs punch" to start, which I modified to "TOMs Tap," partly because it sounds better, and partly because I was developing a bruise on the upper arm where he kept hitting me.

The rules of TOMs Tap are simple, being pretty much identical to the rules of punch buggy. Every time you are the first to see a pair of these very distinctive shoes, you give your partner(s) in crime a love-tap and say "TOMs shoes _____," filling in the blank with whatever color they happen to be. Now, I'm pretty sure in punch buggy, there's some rule about what happens when two people try to claim the same car at the same time, but I don't quite remember what it is. Something about repeating "bunny, bunny, bunny" over and over until you see a white house? (Or is that the graveyard game?) I'm not sure what the TOMs Tap equivalent should be. A hipster on a bike? Too easy. I'm open to suggestions.

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