Actually recurring filler! You know you need more sneakers. Here are some more bargains.
Dennis Busenitz has an $80 skate shoe with Adidas with a good silhouette in a bunch of colorways. I like the mac n cheese for winter, Mark prefers gray and yellow. You can't go wrong either way.
Dressy leather sneakers are popular these days. Cole Haan, Johnson & Murphy, Allen Edmonds all make pretty much the same thing for $100 or more. K-Swiss makes a nearly identical shoe for $31.50.
Asics is widely overlooked despite having some clean designs and interesting colorways. For example, these $60 Tiger Runners make a great summertime beater, especially for those of you with more conservative tastes. The dirtier these get, the better they look. They gray ones are only $50.
If you're more stylistically adventuresome, these Curreo IIs in green are also $50. Mow the lawn while wearing these and the grass stains won't show.
One of my all-time favorite oddball Asics is the Gel-Lite III. The tongue is split down the middle. I don't think anyone else did that. They come in a ton of different colorways but Asics oddly doesn't put them all on one page. Here's a green and yellow version for you Tribe Pride guys, and an ivory and black version for the pianists out there, both for $110. You can sear your retinas with this lime green version for $100. I'm all in on the $80 gray and pink joints.
And if you're going to play tennis I can't say enough good things about the Asics Gel Resolution series.
If you want retro runners with a smorgasbord of color options and you don't want to break the bank, Diadora has a wide range of Camaros and Camaro Iconas (another Tribe Pride version!) starting at $40. There's no wrong way to go with all these colors but my $40 is on these tan and orange beauties.
Too far out there for you? Fine. Put up $55 for these Jog Light Cs and thank me next time you see me.
Hopefully this helps you get straightened out, at least from the ankles down.
Everyone should have cool sneakers. And by that I mean sneakers that make you happy when you put them on. I'm not particularly trendily or well dressed above the ankles, but my shoe game it tight. I'm not afraid to wear some questionable stuff on my feet, and Mark is even farther our there than I am. In what might become a recurring bit, I will suggest a couple shoes you should consider adding to your rotation.
Anyone can rock Stan Smiths, and I firmly believe everyone should have at least one pair of them. These are currently marked down to $48 so the risk factor is low. They're not your standard Stans but no one should lack the confidence to wear them.
Chalk white nubuck uppers with a translucent gray sole? Yes please.
Also on sale at adidas are these Stan Smiths in Primeknit. Get them now for $66 and you're all set for the summer.
If you're feeling confident and you don't plan on encountering bad weather, consider these brown velvet Stan Smiths for $60.
Wear these and you're well prepared for situations like this:
Like my doormat tells you, watch ya step kid! Now go tighten up your footwear collection.
As the world at large knows quite well at this point, we're foremost a blog about dipshittery, William & Mary basketball, and Muppets. But somehow we've also become a blog about sneakers and sneaker culture. If I had the means, I'd be the Imelda Marcos of sneakers, and I'm a piker compared to Mark and zman. The modern sneaker has become as much a work of art as a functional item.
In the case of Freehand Profit, the sneaker as an art form is more literal. The DC-born, Corcoran School of Art and Design-educated, and L.A.-based artist/designer/illustrator deconstructs sneakers to create mesmerizing masks, like this one, built from Nike SB Dunk Lows:
Profit says that his often darkly-themed work can be viewed as a comment on consumer culture, saying, "I don’t want to condemn completely, some of what we consider “consumer culture” provides and improves goods & services. It also provides jobs for creatives. But when we are unaware of how deep it affects us or if we put too much value in the object, then that consumerism becomes a problem. The masks I make are also an attempt to balance the materialism. Both celebrating and destroying the sneaker, embracing the art that is already designed into the sneaker, but using the gas mask to remind us we are a world faced with war, civil unrest and environmental destruction."
If you're doing some early holiday planning, Profit's masks go for as much as $10,000, though you can grab one for as little as $2,500. He did a solo show at Rosewood, a sneaker shop in San Diego, so pay attention to your local kicks merchant's website - you never know.
I can't stop looking at the masks on his website. They're haunting, and they're flat beautiful. Guess I need to start saving some cash.
I didn't just consume a bunch of western media on my trip to Japan, I consumed a lot of culture, albeit not as much as I wanted to. I missed my connecting flight from San Francisco to Osaka and had to spend the night in San Francisco. As a result, my jetlag acclimation/cultural exposure day was mostly consumed by my flight the next day. I never had a big block of free time to travel around the prefecture, so I mostly made brief field trips around my hotel. This limited my cultural exposure to shopping centers and train stations, but I think I developed a fair understanding of day-to-day life in the Kansei region based on what stores stock and thus what people buy. Here are my favorite mundane aspects of southern Japanese culture.
It's perfectly acceptable to carry, and use, a washcloth in public
Osaka is really fucking hot and humid in the summer. So much so that even people from India travel to Osaka and step outside from the airport into the Osaka air for the first time they say "Oh hell no, this shit is way too hot and humid." At least that's what my cabbie said.
It's so hot that everyone sweats their asses off constantly, even inside. Women carry fans and parasols. Men carry washcloths, sometimes even bar towels, everywhere including the office. It's remarkably common to be in a meeting with ten other sweaty dudes, all wiping their faces with small hunks of terrycloth. Aside from Jerry Tarkanian, John Thompson and Ford Prefect, you just don't see towels in the workplace.
After sitting in two days of meetings like this I went to the mall across from my hotel and got myself one of these washcloths. They're technically considered a handkerchief--one side of the washcloth has this gauzy cotton material called tenugui sewn onto it, but it's still a washcloth. Here's mine.
Yes, those are bears. Yes, one of those bears has "ZZZ" next to him indicating that he's asleep--I guess the bear doesn't speak Japanese because he doesn't snore in katakana symbols. And yes, another of those bears is wearing a small green fedora. All my other choices were more preposterous, this is what you get for ¥400.
Anyway, I can't say enough good things about these super-absorbant handkerchiefs and being in a place where it's socially acceptable to constantly mop your forehead with one.
Everything is connected by underground tunnels
Because it's so stupidly hot in Osaka in the summer, they built a series of tunnels to connect just about every important location. Sort of like how places like Montreal and Rochester have tunnels to avoid the winter wind and snow, Osaka has tunnels to avoid the summer humidity sun. Now, navigating these tunnels is no bargain. Here's an example.
The main tributaries mercifully have English signage and my iPhone worked everywhere (thank god for Google maps), so I was able to avoid the scorching sun without getting hideously lost. Unfortunately the tunnels are not air conditioned so I still had to constantly wipe my face with my bear washcloth. Nevertheless, being able to get around completely underground is a source of pride among Osakans, and when I told one of my friends that I traveled to a venue over a mile away and back using only the tunnels, he smiled and said he was proud of me. He then fed me some ridiculous food and drink, which I'll describe another time.
They still have record stores
There was a Tower Records 50 feet from my hotel! And it sold actual records! And it had a whole section dedicated to A Tribe Called Quest!
It also had a very very deep selection of hiphop CDs. Here's just a snapshot from the K's:
KMD, Kool G Rap, Kool Keith, Kool Moe Dee and Kurtis Blow!?! I don't know if there's a record store in Brooklyn that has a CD in stock for all of these artists. I was impressed.
The 69 bus is everywhere
Or so it felt. I saw these bus stops all over the place.
The bathrooms are fantastic and the toilets are divine
Japan is spotless. No litter, no gum on the sidewalk, no dog shit on the curb. Immaculate. This includes all the bathrooms, including public bathrooms at the train station. I have suffered through circumstances requiring me to move my bowels at the old Yankee Stadium, an Amtrak Northeast Corridor train, and the worst gas station bathroom in Cape Cod (even Ryan Lochte wouldn't shit there--filthy, no light, the door had no knob mechanism so it wouldn't close, and no toilet paper (which I discovered after I had shat my emergency shit, so I had to wipe with the discarded Marlboro Reds box I found on the floor--had Marlin been there I would've used my underpants but it didn't occur to me at the time).
By contrast, defecating in Japan is a pleasure. Think of the nicest bathroom you've ever used. That's what they're all like. But better. The toilets all have features to make shitting better. They have a fan that sucks away shitty smells and a noisemaker that covers your shitty noises. They have heated seats. And most importantly, they have a washlet, a faucet that pops out of the seat and washes your bung with warm water. It's like taking a shower after every shit, and it's divine. The toilets also have fans to blow you dry after the washlet does its thing, but the fans are often too weak to really dry you so you still need some TP to finish up.
We're redoing zbathroom soon and I'm getting one of these toilets. That's how life-changing they are (and who knew we'd use the "toto asswash" label again?). Anyone who lives without a Toto toilet is a filthy animal.
They love the Simpsons
I don't know if that's true, but I saw these socks at a department store that carried stuff from Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, and all those other fancy brands you see at high-end US malls.
They love sneakers
This wasn't a surprise. Tons of cool kicks. Here's a small sampling.
I should've bought those Takumi Sen joints but I didn't.
They love tchotchkes
Not Chochkie's, tchotchkes. Many stores have these things that look like bubblegum machines, but instead of bubblegum they dispense tchotchkes. For example, are you into Minions? They have a tchotchke machine for that:
Note that Dave, Tom, Jerry, Tim and Stuart (well, Stewart) are also the names of several of our brothers.
Are cats in beanies or babushkas more your thing? Japan has you covered:
It's a great way to get rid of your pocket change before you leave the country.
The greatest regret of my trip, and perhaps the past 10 years of my life, is that I used my last ¥100 coins buying Minions for zson and pink raccoons for zdaughter (they love Minions and raccoons, respectively) only to turn the corner (they have rows and rows of these things at Yodobashi Camera, which is a batshit crazy store deserving of its own post) to find this:
Sorry rob. Next time I'll get you some fingertip-sized flying squirrel tchotchkes.
I've been meaning to post a couple of things but haven't had the time to do a fulsome job so you're getting more zbouillabaise.
1. adidas stands for "all day I dream about Sketchers"
adidas received a preliminary injunction against Sketchers because Sketchers ripped off their Stan Smiths. I was really excited about this collision of sneakers and IP law, and I was going to write a lengthy post about trademarks and trade dress and what they are and how they work but all you need to know to decide this case is this:
I think the rule the judge applied was "you can't rip people off like that."
2. A Porsche cartoon!
The Porsche 911 is a pretty goofy design. The engine is in the back with a significant amount of weight behind the rear wheels. This setup is great for straight-line acceleration and braking, but it's a nightmare if you want to make a turn. Just ask Rootsy!
Regardless, I will own a 911 before I die. But which one? And does it really matter? As you can see from the video below, the 911 hasn't really changed that much over the past 50+ years (aside from the shift to water-cooled engines in 1999 which made a lot of Porsche fans clutch their pearls, and I'm not a snob about cooling systems).
I'll take mine in Gulf Blue.
3. Macklemore made a song with DJ Premier and KRS-ONE?
Macklemore released a new song yesterday called Buckshot. I was more than a little surprised to see that it was produced by DJ Premier and features a verse by KRS-ONE. If you aren't familiar with Premier, KRS, or their collaborations, you should check out Return of the Boom Bap. You'll thank me. Just ask Rootsy!
Primo hasn't lost a step and the Blastmaster will always be the Blastmaster. I just never expected them to appear on a Macklemore record. Which isn't to say I have any problems with Macklemore, but I wouldn't think that KRS-ONE would offer up 64 bars of hot fiyah to a guy with songs like "White Privilege" and "White Privilege II." This makes me feel even better about paying $15 for KRS's last album on Bandcamp when he was only asking for $10--it's so hard out there he's taking money from Macklemore.
As the old saying goes, if you want to learn about a person, walk a mile in their shoes. Or in the case of several adidas aficionados, fly to Argentina to see a man's shoes.
Gary Aspden is the curator of the adidas Originals x SPEZIAL collection, an archive of some of the brand's premium looks. Aspden is also, as you might imagine, a sneakerhead of the highest order. While working on the collection, he was tipped about a store in Buenos Aires with a huge selection of vintage three-stripe gear. As any sane obsessive might, he gathered three friends and a film crew and flew across an ocean to have a look.
The resulting mini-documentary, Sole Searching in South America, is equal parts hymn to the brand, archeological dig, and homage to one man's lifelong passion.
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