Categories
Sneakers 101

How to be a Sneakerhead Indoors

As most Americans are instructed to stay inside their homes, you may be thinking how you can still be a sneakerhead. Lucky for you, using the internet is half of what it takes to be a sneakerhead so you can still flex from your bedroom that you haven’t left in 3 days.

First thing is to take selfies. The best way to show of your shoe is a picture. The internet is really the only place that people ever see your shoes. It’s the best place to share them to people who like sneakers. Twitter is a great place to talk about shoes but Instagram is the best place to post pictures.

If you’re already trapped in the house, try out some fits. If nobody is gonna see you, experiment. I know you’ll only wear that certain pair of Jordans with that single outfit but stop doing that. Go out of your comfort zone.

Hashtags are your best friends when posting. #sneaker #sneakers #sneakerheads are all staple hashtags. Really though, as long as you make sure and get the hashtags under the “read more tab” you can put as many as you like.

Shameless self promotion! My Instagram will be at the bottom if you need tips.

For picture, it’s the same rules as any. Natural lighting is the best to take a pic in unless you need a light with a flash for any kind of reflective material. Do what you need to do and drag any body size mirror near a window for a picture. The muscle pain and scratched walls are totally worth the likes.

Another big part of a sneakerhead is buying and selling shoes. For doing both of these StockX and GOAT are gonna be your best friends. For starters, they’re both safe. Both have a team making sure all sales are legitimate. If anything goes wrong, they also have staff for easy and helpful customer support. They also have the largest collection of sneakers you can find online.

StockX is a great place to start when buying shoes. It’s a literal stock market for sneakers and the best place to check average price. For selling, it has great stats for prices of sneakers as they move up and down. It’ll tell you when to sell and it makes it really easy to make your money back.

GOAT is my favorite place to buy sneakers. GOAT is full of independent sellers that often undercut their prices to sell their shoes. They always have shoes the second they’re released. GOAT also does a Black Friday giveaway with around 100 prizes. Most are being able to buy shoes for their regular retail price but they also giveaway gift cards.

Most importantly during this virus outbreak stay safe and be smart. As always, this is Robbie telling you to keep your laces tight!

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Categories
Sneakers in Pop Culture

Sneakers in Rap

Rap and sneakers go together better than peanut butter and jelly, Batman and Robin and even french fries and ketchup. There have been songs about shoes for a long time but is started around the 80’s. For this story about the collaboration, I made a playlist of songs that all pay homage to sneaker culture.

Run-DMC’s song “My Adidas” was really the song that started it all. Run-DMC was payed 1 million dollars in 1986 for their song and at the time that was unheard of. It was the first rap song used to advertise shoes and the first ever million dollar endorsement a rap group had ever received.

Jordans didn’t come out until 85′ so for the rest of the 80’s they struggled to fight Adidas’ influence.

In the 90’s once Jordan started to catch up, Sports Illustrated released a magazine titled “Your Sneakers or Your Life” which followed the case of a 15 year old boy murdered for his Jordans along with many other cases of crime similar.

This cut almost all rap and sneaker deals for years. No company wanted to endorse anything that wasn’t squeaky clean. Although the endorsements stopped, sneaker references did not. Hip-Hop has never cared what anyone thought and suddenly it was a lot more taboo to talk about sneakers so that’s what they did.

The 2000’s were the year of the Air Force One. Every shoe wanted to be it. Most shoe designs this decade were low-tops like Reebok who signed Jadakiss and Rakim in 2002. BAPE was also huge his decade. Although it was a huge seller, it eerily resembled the Air Force One lows. Every rapper also had a bar about their outfit which included a basketball jersey, big shorts or bootcut jeans, and Air Force One’s like in Nelly’s song, “Air Force Ones”.

The 2010’s were my favorite year for rapper shoes. It started off with Kanye West’s Yeezy line with Nike. In late 2009, Kanye brought everyone out of the Air Force One Era with his shoe, the Air Yeezy. These crushed the market before 2012 when he released the Air Yeezy 2. The 2’s now go for easily over $4,000. He switched to Adidas and made the Yeezy Boost 350 in 2016. These were so popular, not only does every single colorway sell for around $1,500, he’s released close to 20 different Yeezy shoes and since then and they ALL sell out. From there, Drake got his own line of Jordans. Travis Scott now produces with Nike and has had multiple shoes in the last 2 years.

What’s been your favorite shoe of the decade? As always, this is Robbie reminding you to keep your laces tight!

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