[MsPennynickle]

@  For floor scuffs, like the kind tennis shoes can leave, a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser (or a generic equivilant) should take them right off. 

I also wear heels *everywhere* not just dancing in them, but I'm lucky enough that I live where there's a Nordstrom Rack in addition to a bunch of awesome consignment shops that always have higher end shoes for super cheap, so I never spend more than $25/35 on fancy shoes. And if I find a pair I love, it's usually cheaper to get the soles and/or the heel taps replaced then to buy a new pair.

My cobler charges $10 a pair to replace them ($10 for new soles/ $10 for new heel taps, which works out to $20 for a pair). I've had one pair of shoes since 2005, I bought them on sale, with the original tags (priced at $120) still on them, for $15 and I've had to replace the heel taps twice, maybe 3 times, so all in all $35-45 for 8 years of wear = Worth every penny. But I might just be city-spoiled.

[MsPennynickle]

I actually put myself through school as a professional dancer, and so I originally learned how to dance in "Stripper Heels" on stage, in front of a crowd. I never went with too big a platform, an inch or two tops, since I always worried I would fall off them and hurt myself or others… but as a lot of people have pointed out, nowadays many street heels are indistinguishable from stripper heels.

I was told by many of the old school girls at my club that the reason stripper heels were so popular was because the materials they're made of are particuarly good at aiding in sticking to the pole. I had problems with the stripper heels giving me blisters, even after wearing them for extended periods of time, so after a while, I just gradually started dancing in regular street heels and personally, thought they worked better since the material can form to your foot, whereas the lucite is pretty much fixed. I stopped getting blisters after that.

If it helps, I find that Steve Madden shoes are very well constructed, they last forever and i have never felt unsafe on them.

[MsPennynickle]

I recnetly lost my full time job as a media/video editor for a small software company when it was bought by a big, evil corporation…. but since my degree is in Animation, it's given me a chance to work on my portfolio and Demo Reel. I've been getting contract work off and on since then, but really I'd have to say my occupation now is "starving artist." In my freetime (which I now have a bit too much of) I do special makeup-FX and bulid stop-motion animation puppets for a local production company.