Newsletter 4/25-5/1/22

The Sneaker Savant x 1 To Stock newsletter for April 25th - May 1st, 2022

This weeks coming sneaker releases that I think are worth mentioning…or not.

• Billie Eilish AF1’s

I think I liked these a bit when the initial photos leaked because with 5 straps they looked kinda like fingers, but I’m not so sure anymore. I’m trying to picture a world in which a 41-year-old male, such as myself, could get away with wearing these in public and I’m just not sure one exists.

• AF1 Mid Jewel - Independence Day & Ale Brown

If you know anything about my taste in shoes, you know I have a thing for AF1 Jewel Mids. The ‘Independence Day’ is a classic classic (I think we actually have a card coming up with this pair in conjunction with @ervinshoes ) and the Ale Brown isn’t earth-shattering but I still like it. I’ll be on the lookout for a slightly used pair of each of these in about 5 weeks.

• Dunk Low Banana

I’m not totally sure what’s going on with the Avocado and Banana Dunks…IMO kinda the definition of ‘doing too much’…not that the idea (or even the execution is all that crazy)…I mean…I have my own fruit-themed cards dropping here soon, too…but I guess I’m just shocked it took Nike this long to start focusing on the fruits and veggies (wait, is an avocado a fruit or a veggie?). I think Nike should reconsider and maybe team up with us for our first version of the BAYC shoe:

A few things I bought or took notice of this past week…

• Dunk Chlorophyll

Gotta give a shoutout to my skate shop benefactor who has been hitting me off with random Dunk SBs as of late (at retail). I looked it up…this appears to be Nike’s answer to Matt Welty’s Complex Article ‘10 Classic Nike Sneakers That Should Be SB Dunks’…

• Adam Bomb Squad

I purchased 2 more bombs this past week…adding to my ‘Roy Adam’ collection and added another ‘Positive Adam’…I dunno what it is about the #adambombsquad but there’s just so much here to sort through and I sometimes just get lost scrolling through the collection. I love it. Any time anyone asks me what they should get into (NFTwise), I always suggest Adam Bomb Squad. Thousands and thousands of just dope bombs. And Bobby Hundreds at the helm? Wouldn’t it be something if Nike did something similar - releasing every version of their swoosh ever used? GOLD.

• Moonbirds, RTFKT x Nike, Adidas x BAYC x Punks Comics, Otherside Meta

If you’ve been following the NFT world over the past week, things have just been going bananas (pun sort of intended). One massive project drops a bomb followed by another massive project dropping a bigger bomb followed by another massive project dropping an even bigger bomb, and everything (related to those projects) is just skyrocketing. TBH, this is kinda when I like to sit back and observe…everyone operating off of hype and emotion and I’m just trying to solidify my conviction. I didn’t buy anything related to any of these projects, but I have been watching the mania surrounding this stuff and can’t help but think NFTs are validating Crypto on a level that wasn’t really thought possible prior. I know that NFTs are only a small part of crypto, but ffs, they’re SO much more interesting (to me) than DeFi…

As for the stuff I worked on this past week…

• Sacramento Printing Companies…

So this is kind of crazy to me, but it gives me a bit of supporting evidence surrounding this theory I have about Sacramento. See I grew up about a hundred miles from Sacramento and always thought of Sacramento as a place where people are just super comfortable and never really interested in striving for anything outside of their comfort zone. I went to at least 3 different printing companies in Sacramento this past week (for this idea I had) and all 3 looked at me like I was an alien. What I was asking for wasn’t all that crazy, but they ALL just looked at me and said ‘sorry, we can’t do that.’ It wasn’t like… ‘oh you might want to try this’, or ‘hey we can try this’, it was just like ‘why are you trying to do something so difficult?’ Call me crazy - but I’m literally sitting here saying - ‘hey, let me give you some money for what you advertise to do’ and them basically saying ‘no thanks, that looks too hard for me.’ Just mind-blowing.

• I printed out a handful of cards for some concepts I had:

So @sonsofblackmaria, @byshoef and I (and a couple others) have been messing around with a few card ideas…and I actually laid out a calendar for releases through @1tostock … this past week I printed a few out and tested out different materials. It’s harder than it looks. Nothing came out how I hoped they would.

• I glued some midsoles:

After my ‘clogposite’ post on IG, @scottrenus hit me and told me he had an older pair close to my size that could use a bit of work…he sent them along and I started working on them a bit…we’ll see if I can pull together an acceptable glue job…

• I counted the swooshes on 101 pairs of Nikes:

thesneakersavant

A post shared by The Sneaker Savant (@thesneakersavant)

Outside, irrelevant media that I consumed…

• TV: Better Call Saul season 5:

Last week I totally thought I was watching the last season of Better Call Saul so was expecting a crazy finale…(I completely forgot that Netflix is a season behind). In any case, I finished season 5 and it’s just such a great show. The only drawback - (most of) the events in this show are supposed to take place before ‘Breaking Bad’, but everyone looks 10 years older in this version, so the sequence thing is just a hard sell. A minor issue but noticeable nonetheless. BTW did you know that there is a complete line-for-line, scene-for-scene remake of Breaking Bad in Spanish?

• Podcast: Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend

I’ve never been a fan of Conan O’Brien on TV but having stumbled upon his podcast a few months ago, I’ve gotta say I do like him. I listened to a couple of episodes last week - including this one with Stephen Merchant:

• Book: Chuck Klosterman ‘X’

I read a few Chuck Klosterman books back in the day and only just recently remembered that I liked him. So I went on a quest to find a few more books and uncovered a collection of his essays titled ‘X’. If you like short, digestible pieces and are interested in reading some Klosterman, it’s pretty good. I only had to skip one story that I had literally zero interest in.

For me, I think it’d the Nike x RTFKT Cryptokick Dunk story. This is the future of digital Nike whether we like it or not…

Anyway…enjoy your week!