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SNEAKER_CULTURE

                                                March 6, 2017

An exhibition at the Oakland Museum
about "Sneaker Culture" leaves me
feeling bemused.                            I'm not used to seeing gleeful
                                            tributes to the Nike Corporation
I'm very much a snob who's been             on the local scene.
sitting out this "culture", and I
can only understand the people who
are into it by analogies.

The various glass cases full of
mainstream product from the likes of    On my planet, back in the 90s,
Nike all leaves me completely cold.     word went out that Nike was not
                                        treating it's workers well, and
                                        fans of the "fair trade" movement
                                        like myself all went looking for
                                        substitutes.

The documentary films they're
showing focus on guys, mostly
black guys, with severe cases of
the collecting bug but focused         Or rather, the shoes formerly
on name-brand athletic shoes.          known as athletic.  They
They've got rooms full of racks        proudly make the point that
of Nike sneakers.                      the athletic percentage of
                                       their market has declined to
One guy claimed that he needed to      only 20%.
have a kid so the kid could wear a
pair of kids sneakers he owns.  That            Another exciting factoid
was *presumably* a joke... but then,            was Nike continues to make
he owned a *stack* of these kids                a gazillion dollars on a
shoes in all sizes, so the kid could            model of shoe which they've
keep wearing them as he grew.                   spent $0 on in marketing.
                                                See, that's the *power*
They make the point that there's                of hip-hop culture.
a definite tie-in between Nike
shoes and hip-hop/urban culture,
with guys like Jay-Z announcing
that as a symbol of their success
they were only going to wear
each pair of their "white-on-whites"
just once, before discarding them.


  I can understand the collector impulse,
  though my variant of it is very different:      But my style of collecting
  I've got shelves full of what's now             has always turned it's nose
  regarded as obsolete media (and a storage       up at the impulse toward,
  unit with boxes of still more such stuff).      say, owning pristine copies,
                                                  or buying expensive rare
     And I'm also somewhat interested in          editions.
     Japanese Otaku culture (where I'm      
     largely just looking in from the             What I've got is intended
     outside), where it's evidently a             to be used: preservation is
     point of pride to convert all                secondary.  (And impressing
     available money into "collectibles"          other collectors is far
     of various sorts.                            down the list).
                                            
   But becoming obsessive about wearing
   consumer trash like Nike sneakers-- and
   remaining ignorant or uncaring of the labor       OBAMAS_LEFT_BEHIND
   and environmental practices of an industry
   that's moved en-masse to mainland China...

   Maybe I don't find it depressing
   exactly, but it's not
   particularly uplifting either.



          When it's Medea Benjamin vs. Jay-Z, Jay-Z wins.



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