Noah Goldowitz
Twitter: @TheShoeRestorer
Instagram: @TheShoeRestorer
My favorite All-Star memory is actually a mix of two events, one taking place in 1996 and the other in 2015. In 1996, my favorite baller of all time, Mr. Shawn Kemp, took the All-Star game by storm and put down three poster worthy dunks. He was wearing the Navy/White colorway of the Reebok Kamikaze II, my favorite sneaker of all time. While I was only two years old when the game actually aired, I have watched that game over and over again (first taped on VHS, then on the Internet) as well as many of the classic Supersonics games when Payton and Kemp were unstoppable. The Supersonics jerseys of that period were incredibly simple but powerful and I still hunt for their mid-90s jerseys.
Cut to All-Star Weekend 2015. Sneakersnstuff and Packer Shoes have come together to create one of the best collaborative projects of the last decade, Token38. Better still, they included three Kamikaze IIs of the seven Reebok collaborative models they released. And on top of that, they have included the athletes that made the classics Reebok silhouettes great. I waited on line for the grand opening of the pop-up on Wednesday morning. For many years I have had a strict policy; I would never wait on line or camp for sneakers. I got to Token38 at 8:15 when there were about twenty-five people in line and I didn’t get in until 12:39 when there was a line down the block and around the corner. While waiting in the blistering cold, the warmth came from the great people that weren’t in line to resell; they were just as passionate as I was and so excited for the story Token38 was telling. We exchanged our own memories and built friendships. The two boutiques and the great men behind them, Mike Packer, Peter Jansson, and Erik Fagerlind helped create a great space where sneaker enthusiasts, specifically Reebok enthusiasts, could come to relive some of their best memories and appreciate the phenomenal city that is New York.
