This speaks for itself.

The order of hottest to nottest in order is:
1. Carolina (fuck it)
2. Metallic Red
3. Metallic Green
4. Original - if these look like anything besides the default best shoes ever, you’ve been looking at too many shoes.
Etc, etc.

Not exactly the kind of shoes that belong on this site, since their value isn’t explicit, since they never show up. But I’d be remiss if I ignored it, to be sure.

Bear with me. The next week/weeks are going to be experimental as far as writing style goes. Coverage will remain the same (shoes I think are hot, weird, or a deal). Also some features coming up. If you dig anything, or don’t, speak up, etc

OG Air Max 1s. This pair is improperly listed, and a freaking deal. The soles are a bit yellowed, but they don’t look like they’re going to crack or anything. At any rate, white soles are suicide to begin with, might as well get a pre-yellowed pair and stunt like you were there.Not my size, but they showed up in my search… The OGs kill the retros in this case, and with all air max 1s. Kind of like an infrared or jordan 4.. the reissues are always a little fatter in the body and tongue, which I think is ugly. If these go for under 40, that’s a deal, in my opinion. You might want to stay around 25 though, since they are used, paying $50 for beat shit is not for everyone.

ACGs, they’re my shit. For a while, if you saw me in the street, and you would, I’d be arcteryx’d and ACG’d out, something orange, or grey/brown, nutty on my feet. “That’s me dogg, on my block I didn’t have to play the big shot”, is what Brad meant when he’d post up in houston rocking Goadomes and a light fleece, ready for any weather. Then I moved back to Canada where everyone wore the hell out of that look, only their jeans had raisins (raisans? shout out to J Mascis’ Witch playing a secret gig tonight that I’m not connected enough to get into), peanut butter stains, dust from their little bag of chalk hanging off their jeans, tousled (knotted) hair. If not for some of these details, it might as well have been me. So I just ran a pair of 97s into the ground, trading an OG pair of Okwahns for a TV (which was not cable ready), selling beat-ass wildwoods for $30, spending the money on basketball magazines, bus tickets and feta burgers, etc etc. I was free for now I thought, with less clutter in my sneaker sanctuary, just an X minus 1 pair situation.

But man.. I don’t know what’s worse. That feeling I’d get when I’d leave the house with nothing to wear* or the feeling I just copped while looking at these. Such a sick color combo. Just enough black and white to make it totally look sleepy, and a highlighter yellow swoosh (and lacelocks) to set off your faded ass steep tech, or purple Theta AR, or whatever. I’m not sweating it too hard, because they’re way too large for my feet, but hey, to see a 1999 shoe - any shoe, screw an ACG - on sale, on the cheap, even with a bobo box, is bittersweet unless you cop it. I guess I just know what I like, but don’t always get it.

*worst feeling for about 5 seconds. Sometimes you don’t want to wear your beaters, no matter how icy.

Nike Air Max 98s . This shoe is the equivalent of putting a great jacket on a beautiful girl. I’ll see one on the sartorialist, and you’d think they’d look best in the summer, but plain janes and air max 97s are a lot alike, muted, understated, never mistaken for like, your Pamela Anderson or Dunk. The 98 is like a teched out version of the 97.. more lines, more curves, more colors, more air, but just as low profile, just as sleepy. Then the drunk sine curve of the line right above the air gets under your skin and you can’t think of another shoe. Terrible light techno/house, or whatever, band Red Snapper wore these on the back of a record, to their credit. They didn’t ruin them. You never see these.. This pair is a size 7, perfect for the girl in your life. Buy her them shits, they’re barely nikes, they’re sleepy, lazy and kempt, they were them all over Banff and Italy, Karachi and Brussels, wear them, get them.Look at that teeny weeny swoosh. I miss them, my pair, half a size too big, oh they looked fly. But they could never take the place of my Maxes. :pHope you all had a nice long weekend..

Here is a pair of vintage, OG - for our purposes - Nike Air Force One High’s, in purple and white, from 1992. This shoe is excellent for several reasons. First, it is monochrome. Only purple, purple stitching. There is some white, a swoosh, and the outsole is white. Most air forces with white outsoles can look fake; indeed, most are*. This instance is pretty real though: the quality of leather on this shoe is unbeatable. Nothing on a $700 Italian shoe I don’t mess with, but for a basketball shoe, it’s pretty damn good. These were made in China, yes, but the MIC Nikes are a little better than wherever they’re made now. This concept is nothing new, though. $2 Levi’s from Sears were sounder than any Swedish jean today, just like these dusty leathers spank a Lux out of the park like that.
You have to hand it to this shoe. It’s purple, it’s a high top, but it looks harder and tougher than a Timberland. I, myself am impressed. It should be noted that AF1s are very high, true high tops along with the AF2 and 3 High. I know my man Jay Bil has this exact pair. Reason enough to buy it, to be sure.

I suggest adding this seller to your favorites. He always has some serious heat, and those photos remind me of random stores in Delaware or Connecticut. Kind of a slip through the crack powerseller. One offs of not so much quikstrikes, but random small run shoes from the last few years you might have missed out on. I tend to have at least one of his auctions, active or otherwise, on my list at all times.

*One notable exception to this is the very fine Nike Hong Kong Air Force from, I believe, five years ago. I personally do not own a pair, but it is on my fairly short list of shoes I wish to buy, and maybe look at for twenty minutes when they come in the mail.

220198380670 One of the stranger shifts in perspective in the sneaker game has been Nike’s complete shift to helping out sneakerheads, throwing them bones where they didn’t used to. In 2003 pining for rare airs and developing taste on Niketalk would mean something, but not yield much in the way of results. Like a wildwood? Too bad; only two will drop this year, and in colors you wouldn’t predict (what’s up, rhino). Now though it seems Nike is meeting her minions halfway, throwing out orange and paisley Joy Division Trainer IIs for all the college kids out there.. and it’s been five years since I was fucking with it for a year. The mask at Nike seems to be down, at least for the casual, sneakerhead division. You bark loud enough, ask for bright shoes, she’ll give them to you. I sort of miss the days when the old girl was an opaque monolith, giant, incalculable. What got pimped and why was never apparent, though sometimes she’d throw you a bone. Why did she drop those Mowabbs (scroll way down for AJ’s take)? Why did she make Mids, and then dead ‘em?  

These tech challenges fall with the latter. The originals were great shoes, with a great ad campaign, to be sure, and could hold their own on the quality of concept scale with any Jordan, Force, Flight, or Trainer, depending who you ask. But, forgotten to the sands of time, their image languished on the shelf. Rightly so: Andre Agassi, their face, cut his hair, copped a long term girl, and eventually fell off. As for the clothes.. weren’t no doggs wearing these like they did Jordan wear. So leave it to a handful of bums to bid up mislisted auctions, right around the New Hampshire primaries. Leave it to doggs making threads, nerds buying cred, bored men filling their nights with the rest of their paychecks.. So Nike hollered, and hooked some doggs up with a great shoe, one some have been bumping in the corner for a minute. But by this point it was too late… 

me: Here you go.
game over
3:48 PM whentigersfight: fuck man
3:49 PM me: game over
perioid
whentigersfight: for real
3:50 PM me: thats like i dunno man
a box of DS raped asses or whatever
whentigersfight: hahahaha right
3:51 PM me: murder
id shank a dude for those in my size
real talk
3:53 PM whentigersfight: haha
my homeboy whos over now is flipping
those are his siz
e
3:54 PM me: oh man
he has to cop those man
whentigersfight: hahahha
me: take out a home loan
sell a few 45s
3:55 PM whentigersfight: hahahaha yeah right
3:56 PM me: lol
whentigersfight: my boss was talking the other day about buying a house
3:57 PM like
“i think id have to sell like, 10 45s”
so sick
me: lolol
thats so fucking cool
my pops like
wrote a book
whentigersfight: those shoes in hitop would be sick
me: worked 2 jobs
lol
whentigersfight: hahahaha
right
me: oh yea the grails
whentigersfight: yeah for real
me: there are like 5 metallic high jordan 1s
3:58 PM orange, purple, green
whentigersfight: fuck
me: jay bil found a photo online of one that was tagged
3:59 PM like a dude just painted his metallic purple 1 highs
saddest thing ive seen

Just watching this steelers game. Not much of a game*, here are some auctions:

Some Goldenrods. These are one of the better shoes from the OG be true to your school Dunk colorways (the only wearable colorways). They kind of got a little played out in 03/04 with the reissue, but the highs. The lows show up a lot less than the highs, which raises the cache of the shoe to something.

Is this dude for real? Mostly white air forces for $200 bucks? I’d wear these to an Imax movie, maybe get a $7 coffee with some premium gas in my Chrysler Town and Country. next.

THIS . A fucking great deal. Lava flows, the best ones have “son of lava dome” written in the baby box on the toe, and these are a level down, coming in at somewhere just above a good omelette or mislisted Jordans. The Baltoros took away a lot of the steam from all condition gear shoes but the flows remain strong.

This seller has a lot of cool stuff actually the guy selling the expensive Air Force IIs has a grip of priced heat. Much heat here: 2 pairs of OG low Barkley Alpha Forces, with the strap across the toebox and the basketball tongue. When they reissued these in 2004 they really dropped the ball on the little things, and demoted the shoe to like wack boring GR sneaker. Also check out his hot Knicks force heat, fake Nike approach’s (more lava than lava), even some Etonics and New Balances. Caveat emptor though, nothing under $100 after shipping. Oh and also if you’re bored scroll through the completed auction, you can print it out as a checklist.

* I stand corrected. This was a fine game between two teams I could not care less about. I was also impressed by the Celtics, I didn’t think they had it in them to be honest. Big Baby on fire in the last quarter. Antonio McDyess* was completely graved.

LF to more crappy games by jerks tomorrow

*

OG Nike Air Mowabb — size 9.5 - Here is what Sami said about these shoes in Trumbull Escapades ish #1 in July 2004

This shoe dropped in 1991 as part of the ACG series but more importantly, it was the debut of the Mowabb colorway. The juxtapostion of burnt orange/royal blue defined the Mowabb look, but there is more to be said about the aesthetics of the sneaker itself. It looked like the Hurache LE and the Jordan VI had a baby. Defintely ACG’ish, yet it maintained a crucial edge over many other models in the ACG line due to its relatively Mondrian use of colors and excellent inner sock lining. I personally don’t own a pair but thats because it will be retroed in October, so I will buy it then.

I dont know if Sami would quite speak so highly of this shoe since its now been retroed, he didn’t buy a pair and its now obvious to me at least just how dumb this sneaker is. Its so pliable its almost like a presto! And the lining isn’t excellent, its the dumbest idea. You can’t wear ankle socks with these or the lining rubs against your bare skin and gets filthy (you can see this a little in the pic below), and what kind of sock looks good sticking out of the top of that sock lining? I tried a pair of orange Lacoste socks a few times and it was one of the dumber things I have ever done. Former CEO of Turbine, Jeff Anderson even went out of his way to shake his head at these shoes when I tried wearing them around him at Atari University one year. Also you can’t get them wet.

Click on the image below to see more pics, these look to be in great shape and might not even crumble when you wear them. Kinda funny that he calls them “the classic nike hiking shoe”, the last thing you would ever want to do in these is hike anywhere except to the kitchen for another cold one.

PS - I just realized I made it sound like I dont like these. I actually love em.

Now… I don’t celebrate Christmas any more than I celebrate the CFL, but our sister site big hardcore.net is a big Xmas nut so I thought that I’d post some treats, auctions ending (gators in flavors, like) now and later that you can look at while I get some Chinese food, go see a movie alone and go to the casino (also hopefully alone). Merry bart the flexmas!!!!!!!!.

Up here is one of the better jordans to not get re-released. These are seven rings of hot fire. This particular pair is in really good condition and for the flyness of the shoe, and the condition, it is worth its price right now, although I don’t ever remember them going for 400 bucks. I don’t know if times have changed, and more people are into sneakers, inflating prices, or if a handful of fellows with great taste are bidding up this beautiful baby to rent money status. The shoe is definitely wearable - no cracking - and in showroom shape so you can do whatever you want with it, I won’t judge.

Some old deadstock Nike 1992 Air Spans just rolled up from a seller with a great name. I don’t know how I feel about 1992 era puffy white sole runners. I am sure that at this point in my life I am over the Air Max 1, but I don’t know if I have outsized hoodrack sized style to pull these things off without looking like I’m actively trying to vibe a museum. Or maybe I just dont like weird round soles unless theyre at the bottom of a 97. Regardless, this is one of the few shoes these days that is peeped by true heads… maybe Im saying something here.

Are you dreaming of a white Christmas? Because if you are, might help to get some shoes and put those KAWS x VANS on ice til mid February when the snow melts and invest in some boots, or, if you’re heatunit inclined, some ACGs. While nothing will ever be as indestructible as an Air Max 95 Z, the Terra Humara, a Philly favorite, comes close. I have worn mine two straight winters and they remain in showroom condition, unlike the jewels I copped that day in 04. dave luvs kicks has a couple (Humaras) here.. makes me question whether he really does. Humaras are a tricky thing because with the wrong colorways, any ACG-fence sitting they got completely goes out the window, and youre about a foot away from coochs (new) fav shoe - and if you’re not down with that, here’s a used one from England for all you skinheads - true ACGs of strength. But this seller, who has those old girls and I believe a camo one (not in my size), has the right idea for ACG shoes. Not too much brown, not too many m and m colors either, but somewheres in the middle. And I fucks with that, and hope you will too.

Finally, check out this blackhawks shirt. They kicked our ass on Saturday but I fucks with that, I got a Mitchell and Ness fitted and a friend in Chi town. Whatever, I’m an Islanders fan, just like my grandmaany ways, merry Christmas to all my non jewish friends (aka all of you, with like two exceptions. Sorry mom) and have a happy Boxing Day to all my jewish friends.

^^might be fake. whatever ho ho grave