Mexico town's mutant pointy boots create a craze

The customer known only as "Cesar of Huizache" had an odd request for shoemaker Dario Calderon: He showed him a cell-phone photo of a sequined cowboy boot with pointy toes so long, they curled up toward the knees. He wanted a pair, but with longer toes. "I thought 'What's up with this dude?'" Calderon said at his shop in Matehuala, a northeastern Mexican city of farmers and cattle ranchers accustomed to a more stoic cowboy look. The boot in the photo measured 60 centimeters (23 inches) "but we made him a pair that were 90 centimeters (35 inches) long." The mystery man from Huizache, a nearby village, wore his new boots to Mesquit Rodeo nightclub, where he danced bandido style with a handkerchief hiding his mouth and nose. Then he disappeared. The next thing Calderon knew, it seemed like everyone wanted the bizarre, half-Aladdin, all-Vegas pointy boots, from little boys attending church ceremonies to teenagers at the discos. Nobody knows where Cesar's photo or the fad came from, since he was known to cross back and forth between Mexico and the U.S. But once it hit the sedate city of 90,000 people and auto-part and clothing factories about 18 months ago, it spread to nearby villages and showed up as far away as Mississippi and Texas, where some DJs at rodeo-themed nightclubs say it peaked a year ago and now has gone out of style...more

Stay away from those "rodeo-themed discos", no matter what they are wearing.