Oh Suz, I am so happy for you! You truly deserve to let your style shine on the West Coast. Yes, you are right, it's a major aspect of living out there compared to cold snowy here. Some years ago, I moved from beautiful BC to the Eastern part of the country for various reasons, none of them including footwear freedom.
Since you didn't do an annual flp-out, please allow me:
At this time of the year, I am starting to get very (I mean very) annoyed with not just clunky footwear, but clunky everything pertaining to necessary outdoor gear due to insane weather conditions. Thick sausage coats with pockets rendered difficult to open, combined with hands emprisonned in padded double-layered gloves make it almost impossible to fish for keys especially when carrying packages, which is all the time (precisely because those conditions will diminish your outings and make you maximize any errand). Forget about using your phone, it's deep inside somewhere: you are condemned to let it buzz against you, powerlessly, until you've reached an inside shelter of some sort where to remove your two sets of gloves (forget the finger sensitive touchscreen stuff at this point it won't work), tuck the said gloves under what should be armpit but is just more cushioned fabric likely to let gloves drop on wet slushy snow, extricate your head from, in order: hoodie, tuque and wool scarves (shake off the snow and feel its cold wetness drip down your neck and wrists in the process). By then your fingers are so frozen that the thumb recognition touch ID affair will not operate. By the way your hands are so frozen you don't even know where are your fingers as you can't feel them, and that's when you cruelly remember that Microsoft and Apple and late Steve Jobs all originate on the West Coast where people like Suz are, at this very moment, fashionably sporting white pointy booties with cropped denim and looking fab.
