If you walk up Hayes Street toward the absinthe bars and modern boutiques, past the designer dogs and techies on conference calls, you’ll see them: a mysterious pair of cork door handles in the shape of two obscenely large, bare feet. 

Though they’re attached to a vacant storefront and surrounded by a gated metal prison, they once guarded the entrance to Allbirds, a San Francisco shoe empire that almost exclusively catered to tech workers. But 10 years after its peak — and its multibillion-dollar valuation — the monochromatic sneaker company sold for a mere $39 million this year, signaling the end of an era for a shoe that once embodied the white-collar world. 

Founded in 2015 by Bay Area entrepreneur Joseph Zwillinger, Allbirds shoes were touted as quality, dependable footwear for everyday life in San Francisco. “We don’t think of ourselves as a fashion brand,” co-founder and co-CEO Tim Brown previously told TechCrunch, explaining that the company’s shoes are meant to be “comfortable, functional” and “simple.” 

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Though they lacked the rigor of high-performance running shoes like the Nike Alphafly 3, they were ideal for 2010s Bay Area culture. After all, Allbirds customers weren’t die-hard athletes racing in marathons; they were optimistic startup employees gleefully lining up for brunch in the Mission and $13 truffle fries at industrial burger restaurants. 

Tim Brown, the co-founder of shoe company Allbirds, speaks onstage at the OMR Festival in Hamburg, Germany. 

By 2016, when the term “girl-boss” wasn’t pejorative and butter-infused coffee was a staple of every young professional’s ketogenic diet, Allbirds was at its apex. Its $95 merino Wool Runners were a unifying symbol among tech workers in San Francisco, becoming a regular sight on private charter buses and Dreamforce events.

When it raised $7.25 million that same year, tech reporters who gushed about the shoe’s impressive quality broke even bigger news — soon, there would be an exciting array of new colors: light red and dark blue for women, light green for men, and black. In 2021, Allbirds went public at $15 per........

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