Huff Po – America’s tallest man has a big problem: He can’t find shoes that fit. Even worse: He says he’s been told that getting a pair that properly fit could cost as much as $16,000. He’s Igor Vovkovinskiy and Guinness World Records declared the 7-foot, 8.33-inch paralegal student from Rochester, Minn., to be the tallest man in the U.S. back in 2010. These days, he’d rather have a pair of decent shoes in his closet than a plaque to hang on his wall. “Guinness never contacted me after I got the certificate,” he told the Huffington Post. “That was two years ago. I have one pair of shoes and they’re more like shapeless clogs. There’s no grip, no support.” But while most people can find footwear that fits without a struggle, that task is a tall order for Vovkovinskiy, who is raising money to relieve his estimated size 26 feet by orchestrating a fundraising campaign called “Igor Needs Shoes.” Vovkovinskiy, who emigrated to the U.S. from the Ukraine as a 6-foot-tall 7-year-old, claims he hasn’t owned a good pair of shoes in the the last 5 years, but has had 16 surgeries on his feet. “[My feet] are deformed terribly now,” he said. “I have spent a total of 3 years on bed rest because none of my shoes have been made specifically for my feet. They rub, they make wounds. I have surgery, foot gets more deformed. They rub more, I have more surgery and so on. And the circle goes on.” Some orthopedic shoe makers and doctors have said the only way to stop the circle is for Vovkovinskiy to have laser scans done of each foot, a process estimated to cost $16,000.
Buddy, I understand you're the world's tallest man. That's awesome. Really a great gift you were blessed with. It's not weird or anything that you're 8 feet tall and your shoe is the size of a veterinarian's operating table. I'm just saying that if you're gonna stand in the crowd and try to blend in like pic#2 here, then you need to realize that you're gonna have to be treated just like everyone else. You gotta work for those shoes motherfucker. Stop looking for handouts. EVERYONE'S shoes are expensive. I bought a pair of sneaks the other day, set me back a cool hundred bucks. That's just the way the cookie fucking crumbles. Things cost money. I wasn't panhandling outside of foot locker and stealing coins from the mall wishing well. I paid just like any other warm blooded American - with hard earned cash.
To be honest, Igor. You're sitting on a fucking gold mine and you don't even realize it. You know how many people would pay JUST to come and get a glimpse of you? That has "pack a picnic, fill the Subaru up at Citgo, put the car seats in, and take the kids upstate to spend an otherwise mundane Sunday seeing a human birch tree" written all over it. I'd pay like 80 bucks admission EASY. Stop hanging out at Obama rally's and get your ass in a glass box in the middle of a Natural History museum. People will come from all over the world to see you and you'll have that 16 large lickety split. You know what they say - "if the shoe fits, stop being a needy bitch."
PS Imagine being on the treadmill next to this guy at the gym. He's whining his balls off that his feet hurt even on like a 1.7 MPH setting, and you can't even turn your ipod up loud enough to drown the bastard out because he's 8 feet tall and his superhuman voice sounds like a thunderstorm. Brutal.
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