Sneakers

Sneaker culture for all intents and purposes started in the 1980’s.  The sneakers that you wore in junior high were vital.  They very much formed a part of your identity and style.  It was a stylistic statement that you were making to the public at large.  My obsession started at the beginning of 7^th grade when I bought a pair of Etonic basketball leather hi-tops that were endorsed by Akeem Olajuwon, the Nigerian center who played for the Houston Rockets.  The hi-tops were white with red and accents of yellow.  They came with red laces and the color combination popped big time.  I loved big, loud, flamboyant hi-tops and the late 1980’s had some killer hi-tops.  I bought white shoe polish to try and keep those shoes looking new and fresh for as long as possible.  My buddy Ranjit bought the low-top version of the same shoe.  The hi-tops were way cooler in my humble opinion.   Etonic wasn’t really a major player in the sneaker game and after my hi-tops started to wear out in spring of ’88, I switched to Adidas and this brand quickly became my favorite.  First of all, there was the look.  The three stripes and the trefoil were so cool and since the brand was European that added allure to the brand.  At least for me it did.  But what made the brand unique was that it was a European brand also popular in rap culture.  Run DMC had scored an endorsement deal with Adidas a few years earlier and so the brand effectively straddled the line between sport and fashion.

My initial Adidas purchase was a pair of white tennis sneakers with dark blue stripes.  They weren’t the Ivan Lendl Competitors or the shoes that Swedish tennis star Stefan Edberg wore, but they were a nice shoe and I was very excited to get a pair of shoes that I considered to be very cool.  Adidas was a major player in the tennis world.  Lendl and Edberg were two of the top players at the time and I was drawn to the style and fashion of tennis.  However, my next pair of Adidas would be my transition from cool, European tennis shoes to big, flashy, in your face American basketball hi-tops.  For my back to school shopping before 8^th grade, we went to SportMart, where I found what were to become one of my favorite pair of shoes ever:  The Adidas Conductor endorsed by Patrick Ewing.  Ewing played for the New York Knicks and he wasn’t even one of my favorite players, but the shoes caught my eye immediately.  The hi-tops were white with rich, sky blue stripes and orange accents.  The colors of the NY Knicks.  I didn’t care.  The color scheme took these shoes to the next level from a visual standpoint.  I was over the moon to have found them and on sale for $59.99.   They normally retailed for $80.00.  The Adidas Conductor would be the shoe I would wear for the majority of 8^th grade.  One of my signature outfits would be my khaki colored Bugleboys, a multi-colored, yellow, blue, and white Nike sweatshirt along with my Adidas Hi-tops.   I felt like the King of Cool.  

By March of 1989, my Adidas were wearing out from the everyday beating that an active 14-year-old puts their shoe through.  My mom and my sister took me to the Footlocker near Six Corners for what would be the seminal moment of my sneaker shopping history.  I had somehow convinced my mom to think about buying me a pair of Air Jordan IV’s.  Let me put this in some perspective for you.  My mom worked as a live-in housekeeper and made approximately $300 a week.  The Air Jordan IV retailed for $110.00.  I cannot believe I had the temerity to ask for these shoes.  But my mom always had a soft spot for footwear.  That proclivity was displayed when I came back from Ireland in July 1983 when she bought me a pair of hi-top Nike Air Force One’s for $38.00.  In 1983 that was a lot of money for shoes.  But there was no shame in my game.  I knew that I could score the Jordan’s.  These shoes represented a significant jump in both shoe technology, quality and style.  The leather was soft and pliable.  There was a luxurious feel to the shoe.  The styling of the sneaker was futuristic and yet understated.  When I put the Jordan’s on my feet, they were unlike anything I had worn up to that point.  The cushioning was soft and the shoes were relatively light weight.  The hi-tops that I had previously worn were heavy and clunky in comparison.  It was like switching from driving a Chevy Tahoe to a BMW sports coupe.  Add to that the fact that they were Michael Jordan’s signature shoe and it resulted in the total sneaker package.  As much as I loved Adidas, these shoes were simply a cut above anything else that was available.  It wasn’t even close.  My mother paid the $110 and I was elated.  Shame took a backseat to sneaker superstar status.  I love you mom!!

One of my enduring memories of those Air Jordan IV’s was that I left the square, orange plastic tab that had “Nike Air” engraved on the shoe for at least the first month.  I remember standing at the bus stop in my Jordan’s with the plastic tab on thinking that I was part of sneaker royalty.  It was a huge status symbol at the time to have those shoes.  Nowadays everyone and their grandpappy have the shoes and it’s lost some of its prestige.  Back in 1989, not nearly as many people were wearing Jordan’s.  But it’s incredible that the shoe has maintained its popularity for so long.  The Air Jordan IV is over 30 years old and stylistically it still holds up favorably to anything else out there.  New versions of the Air Jordan’s would come out each year, but I don’t think they ever made cooler shoes that the Jordan’s that were released in ’87, ’88 and ’89.  It’s funny, but I never owned another pair of Air Jordan’s.  Part of it was that I felt guilty about my mom spending that much money on my shoes.  Then once Nike jacked up the price of the shoe to $125 the following year, I never considered the shoe again.

I can remember the shoe that each boy in class wore in junior high.  Tim wore British Knights, more of a street fashion brand than a sports brand.  But they were a very nice-looking shoe.  Danny had a pair of Brooks leather hi-tops, the same design as the shoes worn by Dominique Wilkins but not the same color scheme.  The ones that Danny had were primarily white with black lettering.  They were a very underrated pair of hi-tops.  I’d put them in the same category as the Etonic’s and the Adidas hi-tops I’d previously worn.  Brooks made very good shoes. John and Jonathan both wore Puma hi-tops.  Puma was not a big player in basketball but looking back the hi-tops the David brothers wore were probably the Ralph Sampson Pumas.  A solid hi-top but not like the Jordan II’s that Jonathan had when I was in 7^th grade.  Reggie had the Adidas that I had bought him in January 1989 and while they were loose on him, they looked very cool.  I’m not convinced that they were much of a basketball shoe.  In his case it was more fashion over functionality.    

The brands that were popular back then were Nike, Reebok, Adidas, Converse, Puma, and maybe Fila.  I vaguely remember Diadora, but more as an exotic, hard to find brand that wasn’t available in any of the stores I’d go to for shoes.  Nike really started to completely take over in the late 1980’s.  Signing Michael Jordan was such a huge move for them. The advertising campaigns they created with Michael Jordan and Spike Lee’s character Mars Blackmon were funny, slick and well done.  They were so far ahead of the competition back in 1989.

Even so, I held onto my love for Adidas with the apparel that I’d wear.  My spring windbreaker that year was a green and black Adidas jacket with a big trefoil on the back.  In April of 1989, I had the Adidas jacket with the Air Jordan’s and white Air Jordan track bottoms.  Add to that my flat-top haircut with two lines engraved on each side and I was read for my own rap album cover.  I was Chicago’s version of Vanilla Ice before that joker ever came on the scene!  Is it cringe worthy looking back?  A little, but not really.  It was totally authentic, and I’ll own my ridiculous athletic leisure wear look with pride.  I followed what I identified with and it felt right.

This also feeds into what was my unbridled passion for “Urban” culture. For many this means Black/African-American culture and that is accurate in many respects.  My favorite athletes were black. For example, white kids would be more likely to look up to Ryne Sandberg, but my favorite Cub’s players were Leon Durham and Andre Dawson.  Basketball had become my sport of preference and well…..most of the players were black!  I loved the athleticism and the style that many of them played with.  Think of Michael Jordan competing at the dunk contest in 1985 wearing a gold chain back in 1985.  It literally was the way they moved on the court that appealed to me.  It was simple:  Black athletes were exciting, cool and I wanted to be like them.   

Then there were my musical tastes as well.  It was Dance/Electronica/Rap/R&B and then Rock.  it was very much in that particular order at the time.  That also represented the part of Chicago that I belonged to and I naturally gravitated to those musical genres.  I remember going to Pittsburgh in the summer of 1988 for a ten day vacation with my cousin’s family.  He was four years older than me and came from much more of a conventional background.   He attended a traditional Catholic High School in Pittsburgh, was a member of the wrestling team, and listened to Van Halen.

When we were talking about music and I was sharing the groups/songs that I liked he made the statement, “Oh, so you like black music.”.  My reaction was to recoil from that type of labeling.  I didn’t like it.  It just rubbed me the wrong way.  Not because I had a problem with being associated with “Black Music”, not at all.  But it was a broad, sweeping statement that put me in a box.  Kool & The Gang were one of my favorite groups growing up, but I was also discovering Prince who would  become my favorite artist and the most influential musician of my adolescence.  Billy Ocean, Bobby Brown, De La Soul, Peabo Bryson, Inner City, Terence Trent D’Arby, Sade, Janet Jackson, Living Color, and Tracy Chapman represent vastly different genres of music.  I was drawn to artists you couldn’t easily label and I felt a kinship to that kind of desire to be something distinct, even if it didn’t fit with society’s expectations. 

So yeah, I listened to LL Cool J and Slick Rick.  On the flip side I also loved The Pet Shop Boys, the Human League, Depeche Mode, and Yaz.  I was all over the map and loathed being put into a category.