I agree. I don’t wear shoes inside my house. Ever. But it wouldn’t occur to me to take the same liberties in another person’s home or in a hotel. In the first case it’s presumptuous if you haven’t discussed it with your host, and in the second everything you said plus the fact that it hurts more if someone steps on your bare feet or accidentally drops something on them. Maybe not-short people don’t get stumbled over by tall people who don’t notice them as often, though.
I think the main consideration is your foot hygiene. If you’re going barefoot in public, you must have short, trimmed, files, and clean toenails, (no yellow, thick, bumpy or diseased toenails); trimmed healthy cuticles; no gross calouses, corns or blisters; and no flaky, dry, or peeling skin. It’s OK if your soles are a bit dirty, but your toenails should not be, and your feet should not smell. So if you have good foot hygiene, then yeah, I think it’s totally fine to go barefoot.
When I lived in St. Louis, my greatest hippie delight was walking all over Forest Park barefoot. I loved the sensuous caress of the soft grass on my naked soles. I didn’t mind walking barefoot a few blocks from my apartment to the park. In fact, in those days I walked barefoot through the city a lot. Somehow I avoided injury to my feet. Only got one bee sting on my foot that way. I had read in a book of natural health that walking barefoot over dewy grass is cleansing to the system. As though eliminating waste through the soles of the feet, having them scrubbed by wet grass. I don’t know, if your soles are permeable that way, it means they would let stuff in through your skin too, an argument against walking barefoot on a dirty street.
Once I was walking in Forest Park and tripping. Then I walked over to a restaurant on Euclid and before going in, I sat down on a bench and pulled my moccasins out of my backpack to put them on. I laughed. I turned to the old man next to me and said, “Isn’t this backwards? Having to put on shoes to go indoors?” But he was a drunk and just grunted, “Huh?”
I guess I’m the only one here with roots in Appalachia, so the burden falls on me: to people who are not very far removed from times and places where not everyone can afford shoes, voluntarily going without them is rude, crude, dirty, and ignorant.
It can also bother people who come from whatever metropolitan/old-fashioned/Continental culture never touches food with bare hands, never leans against walls, and never touches a bed without first bathing and putting on night clothes. When I was in Moscow, I began to understand this–to be on the street is to get pretty dirty, and it begins to make sense to protect one’s self and one’s inner sanctum from the filth. Dirt gets tracked into the home inevitably (I think that no place in Europe is careful about removing shoes in a home, like much of Asia is–might be wrong), so part of keeping clean is always wearing shoes or slippers.
It’s the difference between dirt being on your body, or dirt being on something that protects your body from dirt. Down with feet! 
Some Muslim cultures find the soles of your feet offensive. (apparently its like sticking up the finger)
I go barefoot all the time…comfort is the main consideration for me. “In public”–shopping, at the movies, etc.–I’ve got sandals/shoes on. Common areas of a hotel? Now, I wouldn’t walk around in my underwear or without a shirt, but I figure that at the rates most hotels charge, that building is my home for the time I spend there, and I’m gonna go barefoot if I feel like it.
So you do feel that there’s something not right about it, but you can justify it because you’ve paid the hotel money?
No, that’s not what I meant. I’m on the road all the time, and the first thing I do after I check in is take my shoes off–I’m “home”. If I’m just wandering around–say to get something from the vending machine, going to the pool,making a run down to the front desk to score a free travel-size shaving cream, or using the laundry, I’ll go barefoot. If I’m headed down to the lounge/restaurant, I’ll wear whatever footwear is appropriate. OTOH, if the hotel in question happens to be in Key West or Maui…
Specifically, Arab irrespective of religion. You are correct. It’s flagrantly wrong but can be done much more “accidentally” and so is arguably more offensive than a blatant finger.
Just refrain from biting your toenails during that job interview.
Watching people wander around in urban settings in bare feet is like watching someone lick broken glass: thoroughly appalling. Is it rude? Only in that it’s excruciating to contemplate the injuries that could be garnered from such behavior.
But then, I also hate the thought of stubbing my toe on a hypodermic needle, something I guess most people don’t worry about.
I’ve been to some hotels the interior of which seems designed to create an atmosphere of being in a tropical jungle paradise, even though you’re actually inside a hotel in Chicago and it’s 40 below outside.
Still, I think a good general rule of thumb would be if you’re in an area where it would not be inappropriate for a man to walk around shirtless, then you’re OK going barefoot. YMMV.
I hate those cheap little flip-flop shower shoe things. Wearing those around town is like walking around town with a towel around your waist and your hair in curlers. Meh. Get some actual sandals!
Barefoot in public, except for the beach, is rude, crude, and socially unacceptable.
I have a problem with people walking around barefoot outside, getting their feet dirty and muddy, and then walking in my house and tracking it all over the carpet. If your shoes are dirty, you should take them off at the door. If your feet are dirty, either wash them at the hose or don’t come inside.
That’s how most of the people I know (I’m in Appalachia, too) would look at it, but I had never thought of it that way.
Okay, this has come up so frequently lately that someone has to point me in the direction of the contentious threads.
When I think of shoe controversy on the SDMB, I think of People Who Don’t Take Off Their Shoes Upon Entering My Home, which, in spite of being a Pit thread, strikes me as a mostly-genial thread that contains a lot of interesting data points about rarely acknowledged cultural differences.
Where’s the one where people got hurt? 
The three others that spring to mind, from oldest to newest, are Wearing shoes inside a house…, What do you think about this No Shoes trend? and Do you wear shoes inside your own home?
The first one may be the one you’re thinking of, which was locked, although more in the spirit of “this dicussion has gone as far as it’s going to go” than “it’s bannination time.” Although as far as heated goes, the other two are middlin’ warm to bubbling, especially when they venture into germophobe territory.
Tell me I’m not the only person who keeps reading this thread title as “Are bare feed nude?”
umm, feet, dammit