The summer heat has finally arrived in Arizona and I can say without a doubt, I am not a fan. It would be nice if I had a pool of some sort to jump into every now and then, but I don't. Everyone has been telling me that the hot weather has been delayed this year. Typically the temperature starts reaching the 100s around mid-May, but this year it's only really started to get hot min-June. I'm not mad about it at all. The temperature hasn't reached it's peak heat of 115 to 120, so I'll let you know if I'm not melted when that comes around. It's quite fortunate that I have a job that has air conditioning to survive during the week. I couldn't imagine doing an outdoor job here like construction. The summer time brings a lot of road construction to area I'm living in. So many people leave Arizona for the summers because of the heat. In New Hampshire, the summertime brings tourists from all around the country. A good majority of people are moving to NH for the summer from Massachuesetts, Connecticut, and New York. In the summer, town can get awfully hectic and you just know when you see or engage in any ridiculous situation with an individual, it's most likely a tourist. Not going to lie, it can be fun messing with tourists that are a bit too gullible for their own good. I'm a local! Can't be dozing off in my own town.
This will be the first summer in quite some time I won't be back in my hometown at all. My town is awesome in the summer. I live on a massive lake and that's one of the main reasons so many people come to visit and stay in the area. You can go boating, water skiing, wakeboarding, sailing, so many things you can do in the water to fight the heat there. I'll miss it this year. New Hampshire experiences all four seasons throughout the year and I'd say summer is hands down the best one. There's a noticable difference with air quality condition in New Hampshire as well. New Hampshire has nice crisp air with little air polution, while here in Arizona the air is filled with dirt and dust, and little to no trees at all. In the end, I'm here in Arizona for the summer and that's that. I'll make the best of it. It's just unfortunate that the best season of the summer I'm stuck indoors for most of the time due to the temperature just being so unbearable. I have planned a long weekend though to visit my best friend from elementary school in San Diego late July. I'm super excited to go to California. This will be my second time going and I absolutely loved the environment and lifestyle their during my first visit. When I'm back from that trip, I'll definitely take the time to write about what I did and where I went. I'm planning to finally visit one of my favorite stores that I have been following for about three years: Round Two. An awesome buy, sell, trade consignment shop that has been spreading across the states like wildfire. I'll have to pick up some clothes or shoes while I am there as a souvenir.
Since I haven't traveled to San Diego yet, I wanted to talk about the sneaker that I had previously quoted the motto for on my last post. The more obvious shoe of my collection to start with would be the Air Max 1, but I'll only just touch on that shoe a little here. The Air Max 1 was the very first Air Max to come out. In 2019, there are so many Air Max models that there isn't an exact count available online of how many models have been made. From all the old crazy "dad shoe" Air Maxes back in the 80s to all the new hybrids they've created in recent years. Not to mention that Nike allows you to even do personalized customs on certain Air Maxes periodically on their website. To make a long Air Max story short, there are a lot of models, but reflecting back on my last post on the origin for Air Max does goes back to the designer, Tinker Hatfield. Tinker studied architecture when he was at the University of Oregon and this was his stepping stones into design and sneaker creating. With Tinker's skills being quite exceptional in artitecture, he realized that his professional skills could apply directly to shoe creation. Tinker started at Nike in '81 and went into design in '85. The reasoning behind his creation was that he noticed individuals at his gym in Oregon were bringing multiple pairs of shoes to engage in a variety of activies. He wanted to create an all-in-one sneaker that saved you the hassle of bringing in multiple pairs, and he did so. As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm bringing it back to the pencil and paper. I don't want to talk about the Air Max 1 product itself (yet). When it comes to designing a shoe, it's just like the start of any other project in life: you need an outline. A lot of collectors or individuals that love shoes buy them for countless reasons. I have three main reasons why I like to buy and have so many different pairs of sneakers. The first one is simple: I own different pieces of clothing, and not all shoes go with each article of clothing in my closet. Henseforth why I have different colors of sneakers to go with my clothes. The second reason is that I like the shoe and want them now. This reason seems dumb and obvious, but there's some justification behind it. Shoes are created in limited quantities (in most cases unless they're mass produced like the Roshe Run) and if you don't buy the shoe for a retail price when they release, you're going to pay for a resale price and usually, it's way more expensive. I'd rather not pay the resale price if I don't have to. I treat my shoes now very well. I clean any pair that looks like they've been collecting a lot of dirt before they're trashed. The better condition they stay in, the longer I have them, and I don't think my shoe size is going to change at age 23. The third reason I like sneakers is because of some of their story's. Not all shoes have a story behind them, but a lot of the ones I own do. Whether it be when they were first designed, reasoning behind creation, or who worked on the shoe, I just enjoy knowing what the origin for the sneaker that I have on feet.
The third reason for sneaker collecting is what I want to talk about in the rest of this post. If you got a chance to go read my last post, I mentioned I wanted to talk about "The One before the 1." The one before the one is called "The Tinker Sketch." Air Max Zero's This was a shoe that was actually supposed to be the Air Max 1 back in the late '80s. Tinker had designed this "Sketch" before production of the AM1 and wasn't sure if it was the right look for the very first Air Max. The reason this wasn't actually the Air Max 1 was because Tinker thought the shoe from his drawing was too futuristic for it's time; people weren't ready for a model like this to come out. Tinker wanted to keep the model quite simple and the colors to pop. He did so by designing the actual Air Max 1. I own the original colorway for the Air Max 1 (University Red), and have actually seen people wearing the Air Max Zero's before. In the past, I didn't know what the model actual was and any story behind them until I started really getting into Air Max. When I heard that Tinker had a design prior to the AM1, I loved the story behind shoe.
The sole itself looks just like the actual AM1. Dylan Raasch (The person that went forward with the drawing and produced the shoe with Nike) didn't adjust much of that at all. When it came to the upper, there were probably some considerations he had to take into account based off just looking at Tinker's sketch. The materials might have been major. With the shoe consisting of mainly yellow, it's a pretty loud show all around. Perfect for the summer in my opinion. There's a nice Egyptian Blue bubble as well on the sole that gives it that extra bop. Find me this summer rocking these with some nice vintage Nike short shorts and a single stiched t-Shirt.
A spectacular album finally has been brought to Spotify after the inital release date in 2013. Acid Rap by Chance the Rapper. It's finally here in 2019, I believe, due to legal issues with song licenses. Chance released an album after this in 2016 called Coloring Book, and I personally was not a fan. He was going for a more radio available album with big named features and it gave off more of a pop-vibe, and I was not about it. Back during my senior year of high school and the summer before I went off to university, I listened to Acid Rap constantly. I highly recommend starting this album front to bank with a pair of headphones. My favorite song on there has to be Pusha Man because I love the second half of the song also called Paranoia. Let me know what song is your favorite or becomes your favorite after listening.
Comments
Post a Comment