Samantha Wise

In the spring of 2015, Samantha Wise took a job delivering The Register-Guard newspaper. She had a 5-mile route that took four hours to walk in the early morning. “I had painful knees from jogging,” she says. “I learned about barefooting, and I went without shoes around the house and doing errands.”

Within three weeks of beginning her paper route, Wise had become a 24/7 barefooter, and she no longer had pain in her knees. “It’s one of the most enriching things I’ve done,” she says. Wise became a barefooting activist after she was told by a manager at Market of Choice that she couldn’t be in the store without shoes. She joined the online group Barefoot is Legal and returned with a packet a few days later. “If a store is open to the public,” she told the manager, “it shouldn’t discriminate on the basis of a dress code.”

She points out that no shoes, no shirt, no service policies began in the ’60s as a way to discriminate against anti-war hippies. An American citizen born in Mexico, Wise moved to White Salmon, Washington, her father’s hometown, at age 3, then to Eugene, where her mother entered the UO, when she was 8. She graduated with honors from Northwest Youth Corps’ OutDoor School in 2004. She started having children at age 21 and now has five: Simone, Sylas, Ayasha, Rylee and Sadie, ages 10 to 3. She lives with them and her husband-to-be Phillip, a wildland firefighter, in South Eugene. Her two online stores, Modern Zenobia and DIY Nails Direct, can be found on Facebook.

A Note From the Publisher

Dear Readers,

The last two years have been some of the hardest in Eugene Weekly’s 43 years. There were moments when keeping the paper alive felt uncertain. And yet, here we are — still publishing, still investigating, still showing up every week.

That’s because of you!

Not just because of financial support (though that matters enormously), but because of the emails, notes, conversations, encouragement and ideas you shared along the way. You reminded us why this paper exists and who it’s for.

Listening to readers has always been at the heart of Eugene Weekly. This year, that meant launching our popular weekly Activist Alert column, after many of you told us there was no single, reliable place to find information about rallies, meetings and ways to get involved. You asked. We responded.

We’ve also continued to deepen the coverage that sets Eugene Weekly apart, including our in-depth reporting on local real estate development through Bricks & Mortar — digging into what’s being built, who’s behind it and how those decisions shape our community.

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None of this happens by accident. It happens because readers step up and say: this matters.

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Thank you for standing with us!