About BirthdayShoes - the unofficial fan site for Vibram Five Fingers
By Justin on Apr 17, 2009 | In general
This site was created in mid-April 2009 to be a central hub for reviews, pictures, ideas, experiences, activities, and everything else relating to Vibram Five Fingers.
What's the big deal about FiveFingers? Simply put, they are footwear designed to accord with our biological engineering, engineering completed over the course of countless millennia and untold evolutionary iterations.
Vibram Five Fingers are perhaps better understood by describing what they are not rather than what they are: Vibram Five Fingers are not thickly padded, high heeled, motion-controlled shoes that effectively prevent your feet from being feet, which in turn impacts (negatively) your natural walking/running/playing gait. Rather, by being little more than a thin rubber covering on the bottom of your foot (with practically zero arch support or cushioning), Vibram Five Fingers empower you to trod the earth unshod and free — at least, as close to it as you can imagine while still providing minimalistic protection from the concrete jungle of our modern times.
I wish more products fit as harmoniously with our core, animalistic humanity!
If you're new here, be sure to check out:
- The history behind Vibram Five Fingers — From whence these crazy shoes came and where the barefoot/minimalist footwear movement is going!
- An overview of all the models available — also see the Vibram Five Fingers cheat sheet
- Vibram Five Fingers fan stories — in the words and photos of real users!
- Vibram Five Fingers and minimalist resources — a great list of some of best articles and resources on BirthdayShoes!
- Interested in barefoot or minimalist running? Start here.
- Ready to buy Vibram Five Fingers? Go to the store to find legit online retailers, read user feedback on retailers, and find deals like free shipping!
In short, take a look around and welcome!
— Justin Owings, April 2009
a quick note before you go —
- Find Vibram Five Fingers in stock via the store.
- Subscribe by email and get your weekly BirthdayShoes fix plus news alerts OR subscribe by RSS
! - New to VFFs? Read the Vibram Five Fingers beginner's guide!
- Talk to over a 1,600 Vibram Five Fingers fans on the forums!
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Birthday Shoes is not run by Vibram — rather, we're just big fans who "cobble" this site together in whatever spare time we can find. If you want to support what we do here, you can: donate five bucks and we'll send you a sticker!
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the [beginners guide] to Vibram Five Fingers shoes!!
The content of this site is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 License.
Note: This site is not owned, operated, or otherwise affiliated with Vibram or Vibram FiveFingers. The site is intended for entertainment purposes only. Per FTC regulation, it should be assumed that products reviewed on BirthdayShoes were provided to the blogger(s) for free or at discounted cost. Though this is certainly not always the case, we'd rather be in compliance with FTC rules & regulations governing bloggers and product reviews under the assumed "most biased" letter of the law. That said, if it's not immediately obvious, this site is a fan site for minimalist footwear such as Vibram Five Fingers, which is to say that there is a stated bias in favor of these products. Despite our stated bias, between the hundreds of user-submitted stories, the thousands of forum posts (both positive and negative, warts and all!), and the in-depth resources and guides, we do our best to provide in depth information on all products reviewed. In the end, though we strive to be a helpful resource and believe in integrity and honesty, we expect you to do your part — reading the research and making educated decisions (Read: take responsibility for your actions!). We have also passed on reviewing products (not VFFs per se) that were provided to us for free but did not "cut the mustard." If you have any questions about this disclaimer, please contact us!
©2010 by Justin Owings