Sneakerheads - Sneaker Collection, a familliar story?

[elgee 0]

OutKast's Big Boi is a junkie, has been for years.

The multiplatinum rap star got his first shoe fix back when he was
better known as Antwan Patton, a busboy at Steak and Ale. He saved up
his paychecks and rushed to a dealer to cop the only thing that could
cure his jones -- a pair of British Knights tennis shoes.

"I've actually been into sneakers since I was a little kid," Big Boi, 34,
said backstage before his concert this month at the Sneaker Pimps
exhibition in Atlanta. "You can really tell a lot about a person
through the shoes, so I always like to keep me a fresh pair."
Sneaker culture has thrived for decades, but shoe companies have
increasingly capitalized on the demand for one-of-a-kind kicks.
Collectors, known as sneakerheads, have lined up to pay hundreds, even
thousands, of dollars to ensure few people are wearing the same shoes.

"Coming up, my mom got five kids so there wasn't a whole lot of stylish
tennis shoes around the house, so I used to want a lot of sneakers,"

Big Boi said, explaining that he started making up for lost time -- and
shoes -- long before OutKast's 1994 debut,
"Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik."

Juan Castaneda, 27, also grew up in a family of modest means and longed to don the fresh kicks he saw his peers wearing."When I got money to buy them, I started catching up," said Castaneda,
who works at a nursing home in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

He estimates he owns about 200 pairs of sneakers, including a pair of
Nike Air Jordan XIs with patent-leather trim called "Space Jams." They
cost him $500.

It's supply and demand at its simplest, said
Elliott Curtis, a former Carnegie Mellon University basketball player
who for two semesters taught Sneakerology 101, billed as the first
accredited class on sneaker culture.

Shoe companies create a
limited number (say, a few hundred pairs) of shoes -- even if it's just
an old model with new colors or materials -- and demand automatically
spikes.

"It's like a status symbol. If Nike is selling a shoe
for $2,000, they're not expecting to sell that many," the recent
graduate said, adding that sneakerheads are drawn to scarcity.

"If they've got money, they can buy coolness," Curtis said.

Curtis goes to garage sales and mom-and-pop stores seeking rare and
retro sneakers for his 75-pair collection, but he concedes he's waited
in line for limited editions and paid as much as $250 for a pair.
Sporting an ultra-rare set of blue-and-red "Bugs Bunny" Nike Air Jordan
VIIIs, Big Boi said he today boasts at least 400 pairs of sneakers, but
he rarely pays for them because shoe companies send him pairs.

His most expensive, a pair of crocodile-skin Nike Air Force 1s, sell on
various auction sites for up to $1,800. Big Boi has never worn them,
but he plans on taking them out of their Nike lockbox this summer so he
can wear them in a video for his upcoming solo album. To Peter Fahey, the mastermind behind Sneaker Pimps shoe shows, Big Boi's enthusiasm is typical.Sneaker culture got its start in New York in the 1970s, mostly among
playground streetballers and practitioners of an emerging genre of
music called hip-hop. Over the next three decades, rappers and
basketball players -- most notably, Run DMC and Chicago Bulls legend
Michael Jordan -- would play integral roles in boosting the popularity
of rare kicks. "Run DMC were probably at the height of the whole
movement. It was the first time music and sneakers crossed like this,"
Fahey said of the group's 1986 hit, "My Adidas."

Today, Adidas,
Nike and Puma compete with luxury brands such as Chanel, Prada and
Gucci. The major sports shoe companies also allow customers to design
their own shoes. Upstarts such as San Francisco's JB Classics and
Japan's Madfoot and KKOK have snatched up market share as well.

Shoe companies realize hip-hop's influence and work hard to get "a
fresh pair of steps" on a rapper's feet. Earlier this year, Converse
released a line of its iconic All-Stars in tandem with Chicago
rhymesmith Lupe Fiasco. Nike has issued two versions of the Air Yeezy,
inspired by rapper-producer Kanye West. Louis Vuitton also has teamed
up with West.

Some lines, such as the Yeezys, quickly become
collectors' items. Die-hard sneakerheads keep them in their original
boxes like "Star Wars" action figures and ferret them away in closets,
their soles never to be scuffed by a sidewalk.

Bryan Lyle, 22, of Stockbridge, Georgia, said he recently camped out three nights at an Atlanta boutique to get one of the shop's eight pairs of Air Yeezys.

Lyle paid $300, a small fortune for shoes, but Castaneda said the price
more than doubled within days. He got a pair of Yeezys from an eBay
merchant in Hong Kong. The damage? $700.

Castaneda's girlfriend, Melissa Bailey, 26, said Castaneda actually
bought three pairs. He found two online and paid someone to camp out
for the others. Castaneda's modus operandi is to buy three pairs of his
favorite shoes -- one to wear, one to store for later and one to sell
or trade, she said.

"He will not walk through grass. He will not walk through dirt," Bailey said.
Fahey held his first Sneaker Pimps show in Sydney, Australia, in 2003,
but only 200 people showed up. Soon, however, tens of thousands would
attend shows in more than 60 cities. A 2006 show in Jakarta, Indonesia,
drew about 13,000 sneakerheads.

The shows now feature between
1,000 and 1,500 shoes. Some are rare. Others are signed by celebrities.
Hip-hop acts are a staple, as is artwork -- on both kicks and canvas.

At this month's show, hundreds of sneaker enthusiasts filed through
Atlanta's Tabernacle with the decorum of museum patrons, stopping to
admire the shoes displayed on swaths of chain-link fence.

There were novice sneakerheads, such as Chris Shepherd, 20, and Charnelle
Cook, 20, an Atlanta couple who marveled over the DC Comics and
Transformers sneakers.

Asked about her multicolored hightops,
Cook said, "I couldn't tell you what these are called. All I know is
they're Reeboks, and they're fly."

There were seasoned
collectors, such as Kyle Self, 35, of Decatur, Georgia, who said he had
about 25 pairs, some of them still in their boxes, including three
pairs of $400 low-top Pradas, which he called his "everyday sneakers."

There were even female collectors, such as artist Estasha Goodwin, 23,
who modeled a pair of shimmering gold, winged -- yes, winged --
hightops made by Adidas and designer Jeremy Scott.

She complained that shoe companies too often focus on the male market and ignored female aficionados.

"When they do cater to us, it's always bubblegum pink. They don't even
make them in our sizes," she said. "I know women who know more about
sneakers than any dude out here today."

Incidentally, her favorite of the 15 pairs she owns were made for
men -- the Nike "Ace of Spades" Dunks, inspired by the Detroit Tigers'
high-kicking pitcher, Dontrelle Willis, who is prominently featured on
the black-and-aqua shoe's hightop.

Asked why she shelled out $250 for them, she gave a familiar response: "It's a
feeling you get when you know you're the only one that has something.
Even if you're not, it's the way you walk it."


Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/homestyle/05/27/sneaker.head.culture/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

[sinclair 0]

Very familiar, lol.

[ADVedder 0]

very familiar indeed...

[xeifu 0]

familiar ha...

[zint3000 0]

I love that last familiar response~