Flip Flop Travel Bug

To travel to as many caches as possible and to tell the story of how the popularity of flip flops came about.

Flip flops have been around for at least six thousand years. Primitive shoes are shown in rock paintings dating from the Stone Age period some 15,000 years ago. There are paintings of flip flops in ancient Egyptian murals on tombs and temples from about 4,000 B.C.

The oldest surviving examples of thongs were made from papyrus leaves circa l,500 B.C., which are on display in the British Museum.  Early flip flops were made from a multitude of materials.  Ancient Egyptian sandals were made from Papyrus and palm leaves.  Rawhide was used by the Masai in Africa, wooden sandals were made in India, rice straw was used in China and Japan, leaves of the sisal plant provided twine for sandals in South America and the indigenous populations of Mexico used the yucca plant.

The precursor to the modern flip flop really began to catch on, however, when soldiers returned from the Korean War during the postwar 1950's boom. Soldiers wore these predecessors to what we now think of as flip-flops, which were cheap rubber editions that frequently caused blisters and were so poorly made that they didn't last long.

As the footwear entered into American popular culture, it became redesigned and changed into the bright colors of the Fifties design.  Then flip flops came to represent the informal lifestyle and the California lifestyle in general and surf culture in particular.  It seemed like all kids wore them to the beach or the pool and cheap rubber flip flops appeared in every dime store and beach shop.

Over time, designs spread from rubber to wood to leather to bamboo and stylised platforms, yet all of them remsining true to the original base design of the early rubber flip flops.

Flip flops were mostly summer shoes until the 1990's when fashion in the workplace started changing and loosening with experiments like casual Fridays and casual summer dress codes.  Now one sees them during every season of the year and they are worn to a great variety of events.