6 Best New Balance Dad Shoes for Comfortable Travel (2024)

13.09.2024 - 15:53 / cntraveler.com

I was in 10th grade, and I was ahead of the trend. My New Balance 574s, ordered with great apprehension from Urban Outfitters and freshly unboxed, were a deep gray suede. The “N” of the brand’s logo, crimson as it was, supplied delicious contrast. Waiting to enter the chemistry lab of my high school’s newly-constructed science wing, I swanned a bit. Sneakers had only recently been incorporated into the dress code, and my peers largely remained in their deflated, untied boat shoes, not ready to step into the future, or donned the same Nikes they’d need for the afternoon’s sports practice (I, on the other hand, did theater after school). I expected praise for, perhaps envy of, my daring. The year is 2015 and yet I am still unprepared for what I receive instead: a gleeful chorus of “What are those?” accompanied by the cruel but requisite air traffic director–esque pointing.

I had not yet come into my convictions, so I put the shoes back in the box after school, rarely ever wore them after that day, and as I prepared to go away to college, I donated them to Goodwill in near-mint condition. The travesty is twofold—not only am I certain that these shoes would have served me for years and would have aged beautifully into the ongoing reign of the New Balance dad shoe supremacy, but they were also supremely comfortable. Cushioned, chunky, with a thoughtful juxtaposition of colors—I regret that I lacked the courage to stick by this shoe that had it all. But what should I do now—off myself?! No! I must go on living as we all do and, in doing so, learn from my mistakes, make different choices going forward.

And so ahead a trip to Austria and Germany in April of 2023, in the midst of a major Ssense sale, I did what I should have done a long time ago. I ordered a pair of New Balance White 9060s. These are the only sneakers I packed. My conservatism was rewarded. Today, eighteen months later, when a child alive for the same amount of time might be demonstrating the first minor signs of independence from their parent, that same pair remain King. I walk everywhere in them—the block, the Tiergarten, home from work from the Freedom Tower across the Brooklyn Bridge. I exceed 10,000 steps daily (30,000 when traveling), and most of those steps are done in these here shoes.

Let’s divorce the shoe, now, from my own experience and talk about the control elements, the things you can count on for certain. On its site, New Balance deconstructs its excellent product as follows: “The 9060 reinterprets familiar elements sourced from classic 99X models with a warped sensibility inspired by the proudly futuristic, visible tech aesthetic of the Y2K era.” Allow me to translate: Nostalgic chunk, sculptural soles, mesh, and pigskin.