I left all my installation files on my computer and just deleted the sim file and poof, boots gone.
I experimented with this and I was right. My guess was that since one of my sims popped up with the hooker boots and I changed his shoes then maybe the corruption was in the sim file itself. I checked everything on this page and in my install page and no glitched items. When I downloaded and installed my clean sims the boots showed up again.
I then followed these instructions on this page and created my own 'clean' sims (so I could keep my favorite things and get rid of the crap) and uninstalled everything. After lots of playing with this, and getting very frustrated, I just deleted all my files and left the base sim only.
I have a fix for those of you who deleted your bad files and still have them showing up.
