The Urban Intellectualist

The brand, the man, whoever.

Let me start by saying that I am a fan of Jordans… I got the Biohacks and Black Stingrays on my NEED list. So, understand this is personal. My beef is Grade A! So check it…

You release these dope ass shoes you know that people want… but if they are available in the store, which many are not, you gotta be at that joint at 7:00am… nope! Niggas work. Or it’s the weekend and I get to sleep in. But most of the big drops aren’t even in the store. Instead you put them on special apps or make people enter a RAFFLE… to buy a shoe. A raffle yo. Is this a cabaret or a shoe drop… why we doing raffles?!? Make it make sense.

You sell a shoe for $170, $190, $200 and the same twelve folks buy all the shoes and sell them on StockX for $500. They are listed before they even come out because they already know they are gonna get the shoe… but I can’t get one shoe I want. Or I gotta pay the shoe plug more for the same shoe that only cost you 27 cents to make. Nope. And I understand supply and demand, so I get the concept of the price of the shoe. But you value that joint at a fourth of what these suckas sell them for. You gotta know the masses think you are invested in this shit. Gotta be. No way you selling my shoe, with my name, for $10,000 and I’m only getting $170. I mean if I’m wrong… lemme know.

Sneakers are a huge part of urban Black and hip hop culture. The first big sneaker stores for sneakers as fashion were in the inner city. It was young black kids in Philly, Detroit, and Brooklyn rocking Diadora, Italian soccer and tennis shoes; the suede Puma joints, from the German soccer shoe manufacturer; and the aerobics shoe, the Reebok Freestyles that were dubbed the 5411s (that was the cost with tax in New York). These twelve dudes with 5,000 boxes of a shoe you only made 6,000 of, they aren’t hiding, these jokers are famous… and profiting of that culture. The culture that made Jordans not just a basketball shoe, but a staple of urban fashion. Don’t let these white girls in sneakers with their dresses confuse you, sneakers didn’t just get hot. Like cornrows before them, Black inner city kids made those joints hot. The facts are that most of these millionaire resellers are far removed from urban culture, and reselling the re-releases of these shoes we grew up loving but likely not being able to afford. So now that we can afford them, we either cannot get them or have to pay them well over retail for them. I searched the internet, I couldn’t find one of the top five guys in the sneaker resell business… in a sneaker. Again, make it make sense.

So look, I buy your shoes… a few as collectors items, many to rock, I even give em as gifts. I’m a bona fide sneakerhead. So listen… resellers are murdering your brand reputation slowly but surely. This shit should be banned. Period. And even if you don’t ban it, honor the folks who rock these joints, take pics in them, and really make them this profitable in the first place. Put 1/3rd of the damn shoes in the store and the rest on nike.com and when them bitches are gone, they gone. If you wanna buy them and resale, cool, but fuck a bot. You are a whole multi-million dollar brand being threatened by these dudes and their sophisticated “bots” that trick your sites into letting them buy 500 shoes at a time. You have all the power… get to it. But I swear, somebody is gonna have to answer some hard questions if those stingrays drop and I don’t cop them. So in honor of Darryl, Joseph, and Jason who in 1984 pulled the laces out and took their Adidas Superstars through concert doors and over coliseum floors… give us us sneakers!