10 Things Every Single Man Must Own: 8

8. $200+ dress shoes
Accept it: Girls are into footwear, and your feet will be one of the first things she looks at. Invest in quality black leather tie-ups — which will never go out of fashion and will match with most any jeans, pants or suit — to make a great first impression every time. If she knows her shoes, she'll be hoping to find you could afford a pair of Bruno Magli, Kenneth Cole, Steve Madden, or John Varvatos. Sure, they’re not cheap, but hey, it could be worse: We could be the ones in heels.

Guess who's back, after a brief west coast hiatus. Interestingly enough, before I took the 4.5 hour flight out to California (made bearable by the Sony PSP, Wipeout Pure, Napoleon Dynamite, Time, Newsweek, Atlantic Monthly, my Ipod, and the Economist), I had the pleasure of staying at the Westin Hotel. As you may know, number 9 on the list of "10 Things Every Single Man Must own" was 300 thread-count sheets. Now the Westin, in a clever marketing ploy has decided to put a heavenly bed in each one of its rooms. Although the thread count was only 250, i got a pretty good feeling for how a 300-thread count sheet feels, and the jury is still out. Now the down blanket, is something I can get behind. The next time I have $200 waiting around, you know what i'm about. Check for a motivation post sometime soon.

Now to the shoes. I can't really argue with this one. Nice shoes are a part of every single young professionals wardrobe. I try to keep the number of dress shoes under 5, anything more is reaching into dangerous territory. Black tie ups, black lace free, brown tie ups, brown lace free, and some wine colored shoes, should do the trick. Spending $200 dollars, I'm a little iffy on, but if you push the number to about $120, I could get behind it.