big feet, big bills

I've been skating for the past year on what are basically hockey skates (marketed as "recreational skates"). They're reasonably comfortable, but not suitable for the sort of figure skating I've been doing, or hopefully will be doing - they have no toe pick, no tail, and a fairly curved blade with a fairly flat grind. So I went to Cooke's to get real figure skates. Cooke's is the sort of shop where you have to make an appointment to buy skates, not because it's a hoity-toity place, but because it takes a while to fit them properly.

Because so few men figure-skate, there aren't a lot of choices in skates. All the lower-end boots are medium width only. I have wide feet, and Cooke's won't sell me boots that don't fit, and the cheapest boot that will fit is about 3 times the cost of the cheap ones (which aren't really cheap either). These ones are hand-stitched, with leather soles and heels. Oh, and they have to be special-ordered. So I probably won't have them before my next lesson, but when I do... I haven't had a toe-pick since I was a kid, when I had no idea what it was for.