Quick disclaimer: be careful when getting into shoe collecting. The items, or collection, can be super satisfying and can be a tremendous addition to your closet, but it will indeed hurt your wallet. When you play the Game of Shoes, you either go broke or go broke.
The past two years I'd say I've been getting somewhat more serious about sneaker collecting (trainer collecting?). I'm definitely no sneaker don, but I'd say I'm an above average sneaker collector. I've always had an eye for a stylish pair of shoes, but I’ve never had a sole focused niche on a particular brand or model. In high school I was wearing mainly skateboard shoes. I remember going into my freshman year of high school with this mocassin-type Globe sneaker that was tied with leather laces. I wore those shoes to hell. I even skated in them at one point and they got ripped up entirely. I also had a pair of DVS sneakers that I bought on CCS to strictly skateboard in and those ended up ruined due to the skateboard griptape. I wore skate shoes until my junior or senior year of high school. Then I started to wear Polo sneakers, Vans, and Sperrys. Very different from what I'm wearing now, but that was without a doubt the style that I had at the time and the style my friends all had as well. The first and only somewhat "popular" sneaker I ever had in high school was a pair of Roshe Runs. They were the navy-blue pair from the marble pack, and they were super fresh. Roshes were cool and out of the ordinary before Nike overstocked the model. They were one of the first nice pair of Nike shoes I had ever owned in my "adulthood" (as far as I can remember). The Roshe Run was actually a groundbreaking shoe for it's time, and I had no idea. A lot of "higher end" Nike shoes at the time were priced quite unreasonably (like most Nikes still are) but the designer, Dylan Raasch, was creating the Roshe for the Nike Sportswear Brand category and not the performance category where expectations were high to make a top-notch shoe. So he wanted to create a shoe that was stylish with a fair price. I had no clue of this information when I first bought the sneaker and I had only seen the model from one other individual.
During high school, one of my good friends was a big sneakerhead and always had the coolest shoes. He might've been the only one in my high school that knew sneakers and was up on what was current. There were probably others who thought they knew sneakers, but in reality, they didn't know shit. I remember him wearing Jordans, KDs, Foames, Nike slides, and the pair that stuck out to me the most from his collection was the pair of Roshe Runs he had. It's been quite some time since I was a high schooler and quite some time since I've seen this friend unfortunately, but I'm pretty sure that he had the first model of the Roshe. It was a green olive colored upper with a full white sole and a large black swoosh on either side of the shoe. Not that I knew at the time that this shoe had any significance to it at all, nor was I a big sneaker guy; all I knew was that I liked that design, he talked about how comfy they were, and I needed a pair. I remember him helping me look for a fresh colorway to purchase and he swayed my eyes towards the Marble Pack that just recently dropped at the time. I had little to no knowledge about sneaker drops or collections/packs that released, but the pack included three different Roshes with a solid color upper and a marbleized colored sole.
This was the first sneaker that I was surprised the retail price was so high, and by high I mean more than a $45 pair of Vans Authentic's. Nowadays I'm thinking shoes for $120 are cheap. Retailed Nike shoes right now are ranging from $160 to about $200 which is insane, but people drop money like that on sneakers all the time. I just remember my friend showing me a KicksOnFire blog post about the shoes and him saying this is a dope colorway to get. I paid $80 with shipping on the Navy Blue pair and I have never regretted it. I honestly was scared at the time to be spending that much money on a pair of shoes. I knew if my mom found out how much I spent on those Roshe Runs when they arrived to the house, she definitely would have made me return them. I vaguely remember the day I got the shoes, but I do remember the smell that emitted from the insole: a nice, light peppermint scent. The only reason I remember this so well still because all the other brand new shoes from Nike I've purchased smell the exact same. I remember not wearing the shoes for a few days just due to the fear of myself ruining or scraping them. I eventually ended up wearing the shoes probably every other day. The comfort on them were great and I remember getting a lot of complements on the style themselves. I ended up totally beating up the pair of shoes due to daily use, I wore them during my tennis season, and eventually gave them to one of my college roommates my junior year to take on a missions trip. He still has them to this day. Maybe I'll tell him to give them a nice wash and try to make them survive.
There's been quite a few pickups since that first Roshe Run and my sneaker taste hasn't veered off too drastically from it. The Roshe Run gained a ton of popularity over the past few years due to the price being so affordable and the style being an essential to any one's closet. For me, looking at the Roshe now, it's a bit too simple for my taste and now that so many people know about the shoe, and or wear it, it's not in my current rotation. I've got a fair amount of sneakers right now and I wasn't sure what pair to touch on at first. The basis for my sneakers revolves around Nike Air. More specifically Air Max and shoe models from the '80s to early 2000s. This isn't to say I don't like or have new models that Nike puts out though. I do have a pair of the React Element 87s that I plan to touch on, but it's a big jump to be the first sneaker I discuss. Like 'The Boy' says, checks over stripes, that's what David likes. That's his exact words.
The model I will explain next is my newest pickup. The shoe actually released March 26th, 2016 which wasn't that long ago. If you're a sneaker person, you know that this day has been designated as Air Max Day. Even though this shoe was made and released only three years ago, it had been previously designed by an iconic designer in the late 80s who goes down in Nike history as one of the best and influencial designers in sneaker history. Tinker Hatfield. Tinker was the designer for Air Jordans 3 through 15, the Infrared Air Max 90s, and the most iconic one, in my opinion, the very first Air Max: The Air Max 1. I want to pump the shoe breaks a bit though and bring it back before the Air Max 1 was even made. Back to the pencil and paper that Tinker designed on. "The one before the 1."
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Been back and forth with some albums, but they've all been from The Doors. I've never listened to their albums all the way through before. I know Jim Morrison and how popular The Doors are but I've never known fully why. I know a lot of their hits, but that's really all I know from them. I remember "Break on Through (To the Other Side)" From The Doors album from Tony Hawk's Underground Two's soundtrack. I've repeated a few albums while writing this and I really like their sound. I enjoy the dark twisting elements they put out. I'm currently listening to "Maggie McGill," and I need to get to Tangy Town right now.
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