Until around middle school, I wasn’t hugely into sneakers. I was more focused on video games and cartoons. I still am to this day actually. However, I don’t know when it specifically clicked for me that I had a genuine love for sneakers.
I guess it might be in my blood. My father worked at Foot Locker back when he was around my age and told me that he actually had a whole room in his apartment filled with just clothes and sneakers. How he got rid of them all is actually a horror story that I’m gonna have him retell me one day for Sneaker History, but I digress; for myself, it clicked back in middle school. I don’t know why or how, but I ended up on a sneaker blog that was previewing the Brooklyn Project Nike SB Dunk Lows.
And down the rabbit hole I went. Air Jordan’s to adidas to Pumas to Vans–I was soaking everything in. However, I always had a special affinity for Nike SB shoes. They felt exclusive to me, like something that only a few people really knew about. It wasn’t just the Dunks either. The Blazers, the Bruins, the URLs, the early P-Rods; they felt like something that you could only acquire if you knew exactly where to go. The Slam City Dunk Lows were like the epitome of that me.
A shoe that changed colors after you started skating it? And looked fly either way? My mind was blown. The Jesus caricature on the tongue makes me laugh and to this day I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the mental image of Jesus Christ doing a Heelflip over a Pharisee in my head. Who knows? What I do know is that when pictures of a supposed retro popped up a couple of years ago, I was super hyped and subsequently disappointed when I learned there would only be 25 pairs worldwide. I hope Nike SB does a un-version or maybe even a ‘Retro’ in high form with Slam City.
On another hand, I feel like without the Slam City SB’s, we don’t get the Statue of Liberty’s, the Cheech and Chong’s, the Cigar’s, and we probably don’t get anything like the Statue of Liberty Air Force’s from earlier this year either. Maybe it’s just me being a revisionist, but I definitely feel like the Slam City’s are way more important to the history of color technology and experimentation in sneakers than we give them credit for.
Aaron Nojima
Caleb Cattivera