AND THE NIKES ON MY FEET KEEP MY CIPHER COMPLETE

I can always remember the importance of great shoes. The first shoe that ever stood out to me was the Jordan 5 Metallic. I was in junior high when they dropped in 1990. I can’t tell you a single pair of shoes that I ever wore before them, but I can remember the feeling of flexing them across the courtyard the first time I wore them to school. I also remember spotting them on John Conner’s feet in Terminator 2 a year later in 1991. He had the Public Enemy tee, tiger stripe camo jacket…with the Jordans.

In those days, that was the first time I had seen a drip check that resonated with me. The 5s were practically hidden in most scenes of T2, but seeing them on screen was just as impressive as the T-800’s Mini-Gun. Most sneakerheads will point out that the 5 practically had a starring role in the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Fresh Price premiered in September of 1990. Almost a full year ahead of T2 release in July of ’91. I love that the Jordan 5 was such a big part of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. The iconic intro had Will sitting on the spinning throne with his leg on his knee and his 5s on his feet. But no one at my school was dressing like Will. The bright colors he wore didn’t resonate with me. And the Bel-Air Academy uniforms (including the inside out suit jacket) wasn’t relatable to me. But his shoe game was next level.

Those shoes started it all. I missed out on the OG Jordan 6 the following year. I can remember trying them on. But my mom wasn’t very excited about the $125 price tag and they stayed on the shelf that year. I picked up the true Red 7s or “Raptor” colorway in 1992. They had the same price point as the 6s, but this time they went home and they were quickly on feet. That pair of 7s are in my closet as I type this. Same OG box. Same OG laces.

The 7s were the first time I had more than one pair of kicks at the same time. I had them and a few pairs of Converse. Now that I had a sneaker rotation, the 7s didn’t get beat to death like the metallic 5s. The metallic 5s were loved. They played a lot of games of 3 on 3 at the elementary school basketball hoops. Playing on 6 foot hoops and dunking with your buddies is one of the best memories of middle school summers. They endured plenty of bike rides to Blockbuster and K-Mart to buy some chips or a coke. Those 5s are in a landfill now, somewhere. I replaced them in 2000. But retros cant touch OG when it comes to nostalgia.

I can’t remember when I first heard the term sneakerhead. Collecting before the internet was the opposite of how things go now. In the ‘90s, you knew you would get a new Jordan silhouette every year. You knew you would get a colorway for home and away, an all star and maybe playoffs. The only way you would ever see them is a trip to the mall. Here in Phoenix in AZ, it was Metrocenter mall. A trip to Metro brought you to not only champs, but World of Footlocker. If you were lucky, the guy behind the register would go get the upcoming catalogue and you might see a picture of what was to come. The very next question was “when will they be here”. This question was different than “when do they release”. Sneaker stores would get their Js far ahead of the release date. And when you hit the mall as much as I did, every now and then, you could hold the pair in hand a few days before it dropped.

Back in those days, kicks dropped during the week. Often on a school day. It was hard to be the first to flex a new pair of shoes. Two friends of mine cracked the code. In middle school I had a friend whose dad worked at footlocker.  Ill never forget sitting in first period science class and I see Frankie walk in with a pair of Jordan 6 Carmines on feet. I had never even seen the colorway. The Infrared had come out In February of 1991. I knew the silhouette, but I had missed this colorway completely. Here he was rockin’ em on November 11th, 8:15am. The morning they released. His dad would put the transaction through the register at 10:00 am when the store opened. But Frankie was flexing em THAT morning.

Being first is still important in the sneaker community today. Early pairs catch huge prices because of the desire to wear them a few weeks or even a few days early. Todays influencers are sent pairs early to create content and essentially promote the brand on their platforms. Back in the 90s, it was a different game. Release dates were incredibly strict. For every year, the release date was during the week. A lot of kids were in school. There was a newspaper article that said Nike was going to release Jordans on Saturdays because they were receiving backlash from parents that kids were skipping school to get them. The Saturday line up for Js is one of my absolute favorite memories of collecting shoes. Foot Locker would tell its patrons what mall entrance to use for the line up. I would get to the mall hours before it would open and sit in the dark until the sun came up and the mall opened. We would be escorted to the Foot Locker by a manager and we would (hopefully) get our pair. I loved the comradery. I loved seeing the pairs that other kids and adults in line were wearing. We would talk about kicks in line. What we had, what we wanted. It was great times. I wore a size 10. I would ask everyone in front of me what size they were after. I knew that they might only get six or seven pairs of size 10 in stock. I always wanted to know ahead of time if I would have to squeeze into a 9.5 or wear two pairs of socks with a 10.5 before I got to the register. Pairs sat in the 90s all the time. But being the first was always important.

I honestly don’t know how kids can be sneakerheads the way we did it back in the day. The community was much younger than it is today. Everything costs more now. Sneakers are no exception. If you needed sneaks, you needed income. My first job was bagging groceries at a grocery store called Smitty’s. I worked two day per week. Made about $50. Jordans came in around $150 in the 90s. I graduated from bagging groceries to working at a Converse Store. There wasn’t a Nike store in Arizona at the time. Converse called me back after the interview before any shoe store in the mall. So I became a converse employee.  Magic and Larry were in converse when they were winning every ring you could win. But in the 90’s, Converse had some bangers.  As an Arizona kid, Kevin Johnson was huge. He had a signature shoe the Run ‘N Slam with converse.

J.R Rider had the Sky Rider that I absolutely love.  They got their biggest boost when they signed UNLV and Charlotte Hornets star Larry Johnson. The The Aerojam was a great shoe with great colors. The “react” juice was a bit of a gimmick, but the shoe is memorable. The Larry Johnson ad campaign was pretty cringy at the time, but everyone remembers Grandma Ma. If your reading this, I bet you can remember what color his dress was.

But everything comes back to the Chuck Taylor. The Converse Store would always have black, optical white, white, navy, red and others But it was the rare colors that everyone came in to get. Now we are still ahead of the internet at this point. Buyers would come in, ask about a color and leave. SO when we got in a rare color, I would grab a pair for myself. Plaid, pink (bubble gum), rubric’s cube or stars and stripes. I would grab them all. This turned into resale. And the money I made from customers that were thrilled to get them went to Jordans. Nike didn’t acquire converse until 2003. So it might have been a bit shady at the time. I still feel that there is a fine line between resale and scalping, but that’s the game. You might even say I was backdoor selling shoes. But I never saw it that way.

On January 1st, 1995, Tinker Hatfield gave us his masterpiece. The AJ11 Concord. If there is a shoe that came close to my beloved Jordan 5, it is the 11. Nike loves to throw patent leather on everything now-a-days. But in 1995, it was reserved for tuxedo shoes. I wore them to a team meeting at converse (on my day off) and my manager wouldn’t let me wear them into the store. I wore that shoe everywhere. During a high school basketball game, I saw an opponent wear them with black laces. I swapped my laces that night. Never put the white laces back in them. This was the first time I ever swapped laces for a different color. AJ11 concord with black laces are certainly on my Mt Rushmore of shoes.

In 1995, Arizona got its Nike store. It was an outlet store. But I didn’t care. I had to work there. With converse on my resume, I became one of the original team members of the Nike Outlet in Anthem. The outlet was in the middle of nowhere. I don’t think there was a single house in anthem at the time. Exit 229 wasn’t even called anthem road at the time because the community hadn’t been developed yet. Desert Hills road took me to the job that I couldn’t believe I had. I worked at Nike. Now I could be one of the first to look at the seasonal catalogues before anyone else. I studied those things on my break. And I still wanted to be the first to wear every new J that came out.

Nike absolutely released Jordan’s on weekdays. On February 1st of 1996 we got the Jordan 11 Columbia. We all called it the UNC. This shoe was a must cop for me. But February 1st was a …..Thursday. My high school was an open campus. Everyone left for lunch. We would try to get over to Barros for two slices and drink or Taco Bell for the .60 cent tacos. But on that particular day, I wanted to wear them that afternoon. My Friend David D and I jumped in a 1984 Honda CRX and flew down 1-17 to Metro. Grabbed a size 10 and tried to make it back before the bell. The most memorable way I have ever un-DSed a pair, was walking across the student parking lot while turning heads with every step. On that day I was the first to flex that pair.

The 90s also released a pair of shoes that hit just as hard as Jordans. The Foamposite. I worked at Nike when Mike Bibby wore them in the Final Four tournament for UofA in 1997. I didn’t know what they were. To my memory, he wore them BEFORE Penny Hardaway ever played in them. They were different. The technology of a material that contoured to your feet when they heated up was something I knew I had to have. The technology wasn’t cheap. I was a two pair buyer at this point. I had a pair to wear and a pair to keep. Nike listed the Foamposite as a $180 shoe. My OG box still has the Champs sticker of $179.99 on the lid. I remember thinking at the time, no shoe should cost this much.

Now I have a closet full of unwearable shoes. Most are in their OG boxes. Many of the boxes still have their price stickers from Sports Authority, Finish Line, Champs, and of course Foot Locker. Each price sticker is proof that retro 5s were $120. 12s were $135 13s were $150 18s were $175. The progression of prices is steady…but consistent. I love opening up a box of DS OGs. When I bought a pair to wear and a pair to keep, no one said anything about sneaker rot and decay. Nike didn’t make these shoes to last 30 years. But they are pieces of art. More over, they are memories. There is a market for unworn OG shoes.

If you walk into any Sneaker Con, in any state, you can buy shoes that cost as much as a new car. You can try for a new pair of Jordans or dunks every single week. If you’re like me, you take Ls on SNKRS every single week. Long gone are the days of standing in line for a new pair of kicks with a couple of $20 bills in your pocket. We didn’t know that we would ever see retros. Today’s shoe game has sneaker resellers in every mall. Sneaker collabs drop every month. The Jordan 5 has probably been released in 50 colorways by now. But once upon a time, you got 4 colors a year. Sitting on shelfs. And we wore them!

So to all of my sneakerheads out there, what are your favorite kicks? Do you splurge on yourself with fresh pair that you might put on ice every now and then to future flex on the world? Or do you just window shop and imagine how dope some of these shoes would look on your feet. Regardless, you are a part of the culture. Some have some big time spending issues but hey… we all got vices right? Sometimes you just gotta treat yo self no matter if your vice is shoes, cassettes, Supreme gear, purses, or anything else you might desire. You can’t take that cash with you when you’re gone so treat yo damn self!