Nope

Give the noob (to BF) a cigar.

Thanks, but don't make it a fancy or expensive one. I'm just going to split it, empty it, and fill it with something else.

Man, the end of the semester cannot come soon enough.

What are those?

Do they have a stiff sole, i.e. some kind of bike-friendly rigidity? The specs I saw only speak about their traction but they seem to suggest they're bike oriented.

I hope the only convincing going on is that there's no enduring reason to be scared of clipless, only a low but existent and (usually) finite hurdle for adoption. Shoe choice is one of the great reasons to use platforms. Particularly boots for deep winter, but many others as you point out.

I do think there's equal invective on both sides of the alleged convincing -- pro- and anti- clipless. To each his own, preferably fully informed.

Google "spd sandals". My Nashbar spd sandals are the only shoes good for both walking and cycling. I hear the Shimano are better than the Nashbar. When mine wear out, I'll try the Shimanos. I've read that the Keen sandals run really narrow, which eliminates them for my duck feet.

"Skate style clipless shoes" are shoes that look like skate shoes but will take a cleat. They were better than straight up spd shoes for walking, but the cleats still dug into floors. And you can feel the cleat as a lump under your forefoot the whole time, so walking still sucked.

I'm pretty sure that you only need a stiff sole if you're pushing a tiny pedal. That's a clipless thing. For platforms you only need a shoe stiff enough to cushion your foot from the pedal.

There's something funny with my spd sandals. They don't chew up my soft wood floors in my house. They don't grind on the ground outside when I walk on asphalt or stone, but they grind like crazy on concrete. Why is this?

The Next Big Thing In Women's Cycling Shoes

I have a pair of skater-style SPD shoes like that. No idea why.

My guess is that the tread around the cleat is worn down just enough that the cleat is lightly touching the surface. Wood and asphalt are slightly soft and slightly quiet, so the light contact the cleat makes with them is not doing obvious visible damage (yet) or making noise, but if you examine your floor closely, you may find very faint scratches from the cleat. On the other hand, concrete is very rigid and noisy, so the slight contact the cleat makes is creating a loud clack or scratchy noise.
I'm not sure why you haven't noticed an issue with stone. Perhaps the surface is bumpy and the cleat often falls in the gap and doesn't make contact.

Nice heels noglider (Tom) although, if I may be so bold, can I recommend using a turnup in your denim instead of utilising the 'ankle split' style. You'll find that utilising the denim turnup can widen your utilisiation of these denims when alternating between differing footwear e.g. between heels and sandles

My shoes are only noisy on outdoor concrete that's not all that smooth. There's a lot of grit on a typical sidewalk and my guess is what you're hearing is the grit being squished between the cleat and the concrete.

This is a joke, yes? What would be the point of attaching a shoe in which the foot can easily be pulled out of to a pedal system whose sole advantage is is the ability to apply upwards pressure during the backstroke? Those heels need an ankle strap to be in any way credible as clipless footwear.

Not that I know anything about how to wear heels.

We have a hawt BF member who rides in her heels...and is proud to admit it.

Do a Google image search for "high heels bicycle" and you get loads of hits. I thought that might be a convincing pro-platform argument: ride platforms and wear whatever sexy shoes you like. But apparently the clipless crowd had already thought of that.

With Look cleats, a normal cycling shoe is treacherous for walking. I felt as if my cleats were teflon-coated. I HAVE worn heels, when I was at a costume party and my wife and I cross-dressed. It was majorly painful without cleats. I can't imagine what it's like. I assume it's a joke, but who knows?

I have no problems using clipless pedals, but I still prefer powergrips on my commuter. In the winter, I can wear my hiking boots to keep my feet warm. In the summer I wear my cycling shoes for the stiff soles. I feel I lose very little effeciency over my clipless set up on my other bike.

Yeah, Power Grips are pretty good. Too bad they're patented and thus expensive for what they are. Also, I'd like it if they were adjustable. Maybe I could replace the bolt with a wingnut-ended bolt.

Road cleats are far too bulky.

electrik, is that your shoe? Actually, it looks like a cowboy boot.

I built up the sole of my sandals a bit with Shoe Goo, hoping to eliminate the grinding. No luck yet, so I'll pile on some more. I wonder if you could do that with boots like that. It looks like the cleat mount was just screwed into the boot's sole.

Not my shoe. I hear one needs to install a tapped plate on the interior of the shoe, then find a screw that fits and is long enough to reach said plate. If you put the screws straight into cowboy boot sole which is quite hard they would last a while, but eventually strip.

I don't even know if this applies, if it doesn't feel free to ignore me.

With spds, they would always grind on concrete, but usually not on wood floors or such. I tried a couple of different shoes, always the same result.

I switched to Crank Brothers (I've heard of the same results with "Look" mountain cleats), and now my shoes never click on wood floors (I have wood floors where I live) and rarely (though sometimes) grind on concrete. I did have to use the shims to make the cleat stick out a little more to get them to work with the Acid pedals, so if you didn't have to do that they might never hit. Just an fyi.