The practical guide to casual and stylish looking clipless shoes

The prob­lem with cli­p­less shoes are that they look great while you’re ON the bike, but once you get off, they look very out of place.  They would usu­ally be a big no-no for most work places.  Then on top of that, you might have this god damned gigan­tic cleat stick­ing out that makes you sound like you’re wear­ing heels and all the guys will be look­ing around think­ing, “Who is that, a fine lady, maybe?”  And then they turn around, see me and think, “Oh, it’s some guy (me).  Why are his shoes so loud?  Also, why’s he walk­ing like a retard?”  For those rea­sons and more, I always have to bring a sec­ond pair of shoes if I’m actu­ally com­mut­ing with my bike, which is almost all the time.

I want the effi­ciency and foot reten­tion of a cli­p­less pedal but the looks of a “nor­mal” look­ing shoe with a recessed cleat. I’ve opted for Shimano’s SPD ped­als because the SPD-compatible shoes acco­mo­date recessed cleats, have the most vari­ety and their cleats are avail­able at any shop.  I’ve spent all day putting together all my options for shoes, rang­ing from very-casual to very-dressy, scav­eng­ing them from forums and all, so you wouldn’t have to.  This list is pretty com­pre­hen­sive but if you think I missed some­thing, please let me know.

Also, I tried to refrain from includ­ing pho­tos straight from the man­u­fac­tur­ers web­site as they are not always an accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion. So most of these are just nor­mal shots.

Casual or Styl­ish SPD-compatible shoes

1. The DZR Mid­night (clos­est replace­ment to the GMT-8) ($85) looks like a decent sneaker and the cleats don’t hit the ground at all.

2. The DZR Dis­trict ($85) would be nice too, but I would be tempted to change the shoe lace color.

3. The DZR Con­cu­bine ($100) is less con­ven­tional look­ing, with just a sin­gle strap, it looks like a slipper.

4. The Chrome Kursk Pro (avail­able in grey or black) has rel­a­tively poor reviews but I reckon peo­ple buy them cause Chrome has a good rep­u­ta­tion for their mes­sen­ger bags (their orig­i­nal forte), they have excel­lent cus­tomer ser­vice and peo­ple love their look.

5. The FiveTen Minnaar’s ($155).  They don’t have out­stand­ing reviews because appar­ently they fall apart early, but before they do fall apart, they are said to be absolutely fan­tas­tic.  Also, they are prob­a­bly the only shoes in this list avail­able up to size 14 (euro­pean 48).

6. Keen has a few SPD-compatible com­mut­ing shoes. The Keen Austin’s look casual but on the rugged side.

7. Another rugged yet some­what “nor­mal” look­ing shoe is Shimano’s MT22 Moun­tain Shoe.

8. For a stream­lined black shoe, the Exus­tar Men’s SRT707 Tour­ing Shoe looks like a dress shoe.

9. If your bud­get is high and you want a truly dressy shoe wrapped in leather, the Dro­marti Sportivo ($250) looks beau­ti­ful in person.

10. Here’s another option, the Quoc Pham Derby Brown.

11. The Vit­to­ria 1976 looks super cool, very sim­i­lar to the Dro­marti, but not as expen­sive as them.  Still though, at $150/pair, you could buy two DZR pairs for that amount.  Note: Don’t con­fuse this with the Vit­to­ria Tire brand that makes cycling tires.  Vit­to­ria Shoes are an Ital­ian cycling-shoe com­pany that makes their shoes by hand and have a qual­ity rep­u­ta­tion just like Cam­pag­nolo and Cinelli.  (Just like Campy, they have a lack of dis­trib­u­tors in the US as well.)

12. Keep an eye out for limited-edition projects by the Mis­sion Work­shop. Their lim­ited Ron­del was cool look­ing.  They also carry other Quoc Pham models.

13. Lake Cycling has a very sharp style going but as of this writ­ing, their shoes are not avail­able yet. Their road shoes are strictly white, which is awe­some because I could wear these with white shorts. Just make sure the model you are oogling over is SPD-compatible.  I’m sure they’re going to be stupid-pricey though.

14. For the super casual these Shi­mano SPD-compatible san­dals are funny look­ing.  Keen also makes the Com­muter San­dal (not pic­tured). The advan­tage to san­dals is that your feet will never get too hot if you live in very hot weather and if they get wet, they will dry fast.

15. The North­wave City Cruiser is a very plain (nor­mal) look­ing trainer shoe with excel­lent reviews and it’s very inex­pen­sive too.

16. In the Spe­cial­ized Spe­cials sec­tion, they offer a super cush­ioned shoe called the Primo MTB shoe (pic­tured below) for a sur­pris­ingly low price ($45).  The Spe­cial­ized Sonoma (not pic­tured) looks more like a cycling shoe, but in my search a lot of peo­ple have praised their years of good use.

17. Sette Nix was men­tioned and I have added it to the list in case you like this look.  Here’s a video review of Sette Nix’s.

18. Like the look of Vans?  Well how about the VANS Warner SPD’s?  They got gen­er­ally good reviews.  They are made with typical-skate-shoe material.

19. Have freak­ishly wide feet? Or maybe gigan­tic feet? Bont Cycling is one hell of a cool custom-making-shoe-company! They lit­er­ally make a shoe based on the mold of your feet. Tell them to make one that is SPD-compatible.

20. Retrofix will add cleats to your favorite shoes.  They could do it for you or you could do it your­self. I wouldn’t rec­om­mend it though, I mean… the shoe will prob­a­bly fall apart pretty quick prob­a­bly.  And what­ever they attach seems like it clearly sticks out so it won’t be ideal for walking.

For me, it comes down to the DZR GMT-8 or Dis­trict.  The DZR Cor­cu­bine is tempt­ing, but I think it looks bad with shorts which is what I ride in for more than half the year.  The Vittoria’s are awe­some because they’re white and they’ll go great with white shorts, but they are $150, haha.  I think I’m going to go for the DZR GMT-8 because they are said to have pretty stiff soles so they’ll last long, the cleats don’t grind against con­crete and they are pretty sharp look­ing.  The Vittoria’s are said to have the same features.

What ped­als to choose?

Now that you’ve seen what options you have for shoes, you need to get some SPD ped­als that could accom­mo­date cleats if you don’t have one already.  By the way it takes lit­er­ally two min­utes to swap a pair of ped­als, so any bike shop can do it instantly prob­a­bly if you ask them.  Here we see a cou­ple options…

1. I’m per­son­ally opt­ing for the Shi­mano PD-A530 SPD Dual Plat­form Bike Pedal because it has a per­fect plat­form on the one side to accom­mo­date unclipped rid­ing with nor­mal shoes (or in my case, my nor­mal shoes are Vibrams FiveFin­gers) and of course the other side has the attach­ment point.  This seems very prac­ti­cal for “real­ity.”  They have black and sil­ver versions.

2. If you’ve got a clas­sic look­ing bike and like the func­tion­al­ity of the above pedal but want some­thing that could match a vin­tage style and have more grip on the normal-shoe-side, then go for the Shi­mano PD-M324 Cli­p­less Ped­als. They are a lit­tle bit heav­ier but are so durable they seem like they will last decades.

3. If you don’t mind spend­ing $80 for the ped­als, you could go for the very light Shi­mano PD-A600 Ulte­gra SPD Road Bike Ped­als.

And last but not least, which cleats to choose?

You must attach cleats to the bot­tom of your shoes so that you could clip into the ped­als. Shi­mano makes two types of SPD cleats: sin­gle release and multi-release.

If you are new to cli­p­less ped­al­ing, I highly rec­om­mend the multi-release Shi­mano SM-SH56 SPD Cleat Set because they allow you to dis­en­gage from the pedal in mul­ti­ple direc­tions, not just one.  In case of an emer­gency, this is prob­a­bly what is going to save you from falling.  Even if you have a lot of expe­ri­ence, most peo­ple are com­mend­ing these ped­als because false-releases seem to be extremely rare or nonex­is­tent. Note: Don’t choose this if you like to do bunny hops, haha.

If you absolutely want the single-release Shi­mano SH51 SPD Cleat then by all means go for it. Bicy­cling is very per­sonal, that’s why we have all these choices.

Note: If you buy new ped­als, they come with the single-release cleats.

Hope that helps!  Now all you need to do is decide on the shoe, pedal and cleat and then you’ll have awe­some cli­p­less ped­als and still be able to get your errands done with­out look­ing (or sound­ing) too-funny off the bike.