I started this on IG a few weeks/months ago (goddam time has been moving fast), but I really felt the need to expand a bit on it all…sneakers every morning. Sneakers every day. Sneakers every night. Is this what ‘sneaker burnout’ feels like?
(This is the original IG post that started it): I dunno about y’all, but every once in a while, I feel like I have a ‘sneaker’ hangover. Like it’s just too goddam much. Every morning: sneakers. Every afternoon: sneakers. Every night: sneakers. Even the sneaker blogs get bored and even the sneaker blogs are posting shit that has nothing to do with sneakers. And…god….just about EVERYTHING looks the same to me. How is this not a flooded market?
No, I can’t tell the difference between varsity red and university red and true red and red, red. It’s all the fucking same. They ALL look the same to me.
Take this for example: how many different versions of the Jordan 1 do you think there are out there? I mean, there’s no real documentation out there on it…but if you do a simple search on GOAT, you’ll see more than 3,000 DIFFERENT pairs of Jordan 1’s. If you search Stockx, you’ll see more than 13,000 DIFFERENT pairs of Jordan 1’s. Who’s got the right number? Who’s got the wrong number? Is the REAL number somewhere in between? In both cases - that’s an INSANE number of shoes.
Even if we take GOAT’s lower number 3,000 pairs…if you owned one pair of each of these different pairs of Jordan 1’s on the market, it would take you more than EIGHT YEARS OF WEARING A DIFFERENT PAIR EVERY SINGLE DAY TO GIVE EACH PAIR A SINGLE WEAR. All things being equal - if shoes didn’t deteriorate at a faster clip than most clothing - you could EASILY go the rest of your life just wearing Jordan 1’s every single day and NEVER switching it up. Ever. Average lifespan in the U.S. is about 80 years - that’d be 3000 pairs worn 10 times each. And that’s not even counting new releases. At what point do we say… ‘ok, this is enough for me’?
To be continued…
DJ Clark Kent talked about this in _Just For Kicks_ documentary with respect to Air Force 1's. He said getting dressed is "just confusion" because he is choosing a single pair from among hundreds of pairs in his collection. My collection isn't that big, but I get hangover from taking in too much social media and forum posts. It's a result of spending too much time zoomed in on sneakers. When I zoom out and consider life and existence in general, I get my balance restored. So to prevent hangover, I try to carefully choose who I follow and what sites I pay attention to, and -- less successfully -- how much time I spend on what everyone is saying and showing off. (I need to go through and winnow who I'm following on IG.)
As I get older, I look less at colorways (because my dress becomes more muted) and more at materials. I don't have a need to grow my collection to include every color in the rainbow. I don't spend time gawking at people showing off their huge collections of Air Jordan 1's. But Air Force 1 Highs on the other hand...!!
perpetual money machine grinds on