(6/8) The sneaker hangover.
The seemingly ever-present feeling that I’m drowning in sneakers and sneaker information - it’s also exactly why I no longer get caught up on any particular release. There’s too many out there for me to lose sleep over any of them. At one point, early on, when FOMO was like a real real thing that nobody ever put a name to, it was kind more of a ‘famine’ mentality. There just weren’t all that many releases to fall back on. So we went for them all. I always think of the Classic Green Jordan 4’s that came out in 2004...there was SUCH a drought with Jordan 4’s in general (the last pair of 4’s to drop was in 1999) that people ate that shoe up like it was going out of style (and it did). I even considered purchasing that shoe that had no home/no story/no connection to Michael Jordan other than in name. I’m glad I waited. Cuz I maintain to this day that that was a shoe that just never needed to be made.
But it’s also interesting…because sneakers have effectively become ‘fast fashion’….and as if any of us need any more shoes, the media-scapes of the world are convincing us that we *need* just one more pair. Just one more! And so with 500,000,000+ pairs of shoes releasing every week worldwide (remember 24.2bn pairs manufactured in 2018) from every brand across the globe - the news and everyone would have you believe that ‘sneakerheads’ seem to be fixated on only one pair at a time. Why is there only a handful of pairs at any given moment that we just keep seeing over and over and over again? Because that’s the one that everyone on social media is telling us to care about. That’s what the blogs are telling us to care about. That’s the one that is getting the most exposure. Think about that: 500 million pairs of shoes are released weekly all over the globe and we are fixated on snagging that ONE pair!
It’s draining. And I KNOW that if you’re here because you like sneakers, you probably also feel it.
So when you decide you aren’t going to trip out on any single release, it can become liberating. I can’t even remember the last pair of shoes I tried for on SNKRS or on release day…I guess not enough f*cks in my tank are left when I’ve sought out the pairs that I’ve been patiently waiting 5, 10, 20+ years for. This is why I patiently wait til the hype on most pairs dies down. So I can cop for cheap.
But I’m starting to feel disgusted with myself. Why does ANYONE need THIS many pairs of shoes (and this ain’t even the half of it)?
And before you get all uppity…I get it - they’re not making these dope sneakers for guys my age. They’re making sneakers for the 18-35 demographic. The folks with the most *disposable* income. The folks that don’t have families to feed or mortgages to pay. And that’s fine…if it makes you happy to do what you’re doing, keep doing it. I’m not here to tell you ‘don’t do what I did.’ For f*cks sake, it took me more than 25 years of buying sneakers to look at the absurdity of it all. And I still can’t quit! It’s just…when you take a look around and what the fruits of your labor actually bear…is there even a goal?
Sometimes I look at some of my pairs and my first thought is ‘I should get rid of these.’ And then my second thought is ‘nah not worth it just beat the shit out of them.’ And then I end up wearing them for hiking or skating or riverwalking or whatever in an attempt to run through them. But these shoes last a long goddam time - even in rough conditions. So I’m often confronted with the idea of ‘use’ and ‘waste’. I buy plenty of pairs with the intention of squeezing every last drop of life out of them, but it rarely ever gets to that point because there are just too many pairs. And what’s crazy - even when I get rid of pairs that have ‘given up the ghost’, I STILL miss them. I STILL wish I had them. For what? FOR WHAT?
For example, some of my most *beat* shoes still have tons of life left in them. Nike says that running shoes should last through 300-500 miles of running. And, even though I’m not running in the vast majority of my running shoes (who the hell runs in Air Max 97’s?), but those I do run in I’m able to squeeze out much more than 500 miles. Take a look at my running shoe of choice - Vibrams fivefingers KSO Trek…
I bought these ~5 years ago and have worn them on runs of at least 2-3 miles (and at most 7-10 miles) per week since having purchased them. Purposefully flimsy as hell with a 5mm (!) Vibram sole, and they’ve still managed to hold up throughout the years. At the very least I estimate I’ve run at least 520 miles in those above, but the real distance can be somewhat close to 2000 miles. 2000 miles and they’re still wearable!
FFS.
They also say that if you play ball 2-3 times a week, your basketball shoes should be replaced every 3 to 4 months…I know that I used to beat the hell out of pairs I had when I was younger, but I STILL wore them for multiple years. YEARS! It took me a good 3-5 years to run through a single pair of ball shoes even when I was balling 3-5 days per week. And I would upgrade not out of necessity but out of style.
I think Nike *tried* to take an experimental step in the right direction with the Nike Mayfly (named after a fly that lives on 48 hours), which was supposed to break down after 100km, but it really wasn’t much of a hit.
So what happens to all of those soles? For me, they just end up on my shoe rack….