#180. Shoes: Form or Function?
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A short bonus episode spun off from the crew's Air discussion, with no movie review and no opening banter — Mike, JVL, and Sonny dive straight into a freewheeling chat about shoes as function versus fashion. Mike recalls his high-school job at Hibbett Sports fitting runners for gait and pronation, and confesses he tuned out running-shoe tech entirely once he left the business; JVL fills the gap by explaining the "super shoe" revolution (a stiff carbon-fiber plate atop reactive foam that shaves roughly four percent off elite marathon times), likening it to the banned "shark skin" Olympic swimsuits, and tracing the pendulum swing from barefoot-style Vibram FiveFingers to Hoka's foam-platform extreme, plus a detour into the gimmicky Reebok Pump (and the SNL "Reebok Turkey" sketch) and his own quest to special-order discontinued Wilson Pro Staff tennis shoes. Sonny reveals he's worn Adidas Sambas almost exclusively since 1996 (at least twenty pairs and counting), plus dedicated New Balance gym shoes and pricey John Varvatos laceless sneakers he only buys on sale. The back half turns to sneaker collecting and resale culture: JVL, browsing StockX live, finds a 1985 Jordan 1 UNC bid at $484 and a Jordan OG Chicago listed at $35,000, which none of the three hosts — all self-described utilitarians about footwear — can really wrap their heads around, with Sonny comparing it to baseball-card and Star Wars-toy speculation (and name-checking his own most valuable keepsake, a sealed Dogma DVD) while Mike likens collector sneakers to the shoe world's Dodge Viper.
From the show notes
Collecting vs. Wearing, the age-old question.
Full transcript
Mike00:00:00Welcome back to the sub beacon bonus episode. We just talked about air. Let's talk about shoes, air Jordans, other shoes. So I used to be a shoe salesman in high school. So wait, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Can we, can we, we need to, we need to clarify what that means. Did you work at a footlocker? I worked at a regional, uh, sporting goods store in which I sold, uh, running shoes. That was my, that was my job. So, um, anybody in the South and the greater South knows Hibbert sports. That's where I was working and selling most like we were a store that sold running shoes. And so people who ran and jogged came into our store. That was sort of our specialty.
JVL00:00:51So pronator, are you a supinator, right? You were looking at their stride gate assessment. exactly what was the number when you were doing this what was your number one running shoe air pegasus brooks okay brooks model um gosh i can't remember um the brooks grid no they had
Mike00:01:10just developed like their new cushion whatever their new cushion they had developed you know it's like they cycle through every four or five years they've got some great new development in shoes technology that's like just a repackaging the old one um but we saw brooks and mizuno and a lot of nike uh a lot of new balance actually not just like the new balance casual shoes but they were you know some of the running shoes as well um asics and not a lot of adidas so
JVL00:01:36have you have you kept up with running shoe technology and the super shoe
Mike00:01:41look people can't see listeners can't see but i am not a runner so the answer to that is no once once it became no longer a part of my professional life i stopped paying attention so well over the
JVL00:01:52last couple years uh we have had a technology breakthrough in in running shoe design which uh the class of shoe which this is is referred to as the super shoe and what it does is it takes a very hard very thin plate typically made of carbon fiber that comes under the the in the inner sole and then below that you get a lot of what is reactive foam and everybody calls it something different right and the end result is that the super shoes seem to shave off four percent on your normal time for elite runners and so when super shoes started showing up all of a sudden just like marathon records started dropping everywhere by a lot and they've just you know so there was it's the the running equivalent of do you remember the super swimsuits that they had at the olympics for like it's like 10 years ago or something when all of a sudden every single olympic record fell over the course of a single olympiad because everybody's wearing these shark skin suits and then they outlawed them and that's basically what what the super
Mike00:03:04shoe is but for running right right now it's so there really is new technology is what there
JVL00:03:10really is yes wow that's that's impressive um did you did you guys ever have air jordans uh was that so i never i never owned a pair so i didn't i for basketball shoes i would bounce around i had the pump do you remember the reebok pump basketball shoes which the single the single worst gimmick ever was the pump and this was this was a reebok technology the idea of which is there was like a little air bladder in the high top and you would either pump it up with fingers which is a d brown this is the most d brown won the nba slam dunk contest because he wore the brand new reebok pumps and he pumped his his reeboks up this is like the terrell owens and the sharpie thing you know the worst most crass marketing gimmick ever uh but i then had a shack branded pair of reeboks which the pump was done with a little cartridge of uh like air and so you would put it on then on the two and it and man i was such a sucker for technology jump higher try it better
Mike00:04:19yeah yeah oh yeah of course that's hilarious no like by the way there's a fantastic saturday night live uh commercial from the reebok air uh reebok pump uh era where it's like the pump turkey where they blow up the turkey with like a pump chris rock is like poking up but it's like nike spelled like like a turkey so no it's those those were those were like there's so much gimmick in shoe sales it's just it is like the maybe the worst of all like products like with just ridiculous gimmicks
JVL00:04:49so you know what i had wanted to talk to you guys about though was collecting which is a relatively new phenomenon not a whole new phenomenon but the shoes and sneakers are now what bad what baseball cards were in the 90s and there are whole universes in which you know we now have bespoke limited edition runs of different air jordans and and people will i mean there is a game worn shoe collecting side where people are buying like i want to buy one shoe that's curry war on july 23rd uh playing against toronto and then you know you get that and you get it certified and then encased right the grading company will certify it and grade it and stick it in a sealed plastic lucite box but then there's even just you know nike has put out a special limited edition of 5000 pairs of shoe x and the collectors all just buy them again not to wear but they're to collect into house and then if you go to a website like stock x which is a yes like an ebay for shoes ebay has its own thing but and i somebody i i love collecting everything i am a i have the the soul of a collector and the shoe thing is the one thing that i look at and i say you gotta be
Mike00:06:14fucking kidding me they're crazy those people are crazy right right yeah i don't i don't get it i like utilitarian relationship with shoes it's it's like my relationship with cars like i just i can admire nice looking shoes i can appreciate how shoes can be you know can be better functioning if they have you know certain designs um or that they you know look nice it's just not for me it's it's just to me it's a thing i gotta put on my feet so i can walk out the door um i gotta be comfortable you know i gotta they gotta be functional at a certain level but that's that whole shoe collecting thing is because i've heard of what what is what it is called what's the website the stock x this is like stock x is like a huge yeah huge thing so sonny you're muted but before you
Sonny00:07:04go are you wearing sambas right now i am literally wearing sambas right now so i mean i i am the sort of person who will wear uh who will wear the same exact brand of shoe for literally decades and i have worn i mean i have worn sambas on and off but mostly on since like 1996 like a solid like 20 27 years of uh of of samba wearing now which version of the sambas do you like with the sway because there's lots of variations just standard just your your standard run-of-the-mill off the shelf at sports authority or whatever uh samba i guess sports authority samba one anymore how
JVL00:07:41many pairs of sambas would you say you have bought over this course
Sonny00:07:45at least 20 at least 20 i mean basically i mean basically one every 18 months so probably maybe 15 something like that like when they wear out um and for a while i did i did go i i took a break i took a couple year break uh not not long ago from the sambas um and now i kind of i kind of cycle through three different shoes that i have very specific functions for not including like dress shoes not including you know like i have a i have a pair of uh patent leather shoes that i wear with a tuxedo i've got you know i've got boots that i wear in like my just average day-to-day walking shoes uh i or one of one of three pairs of shoes i have a pair of new balances that i get the same model of every time i can't remember the number right now i wish i was wearing them so i could i could tell everybody but uh i have like the same seven the same number the same the same new wait what what what number did you just say i i was just throwing
Mike00:08:45out a random number it's like it doesn't matter either 897 whatever yeah it's i i can't remember
Sonny00:08:49what the actual number is but it's like it's a it's a three number code and i will i will i will put it in the show notes um uh i i have a pair of samas that i wear and i've been i have my most recent edition so the new balances i've been wearing for like 10 years at the gym because they they're it's like the only thing that i can wear that my feet aren't in agony after like the fucking elliptical and and a stationary bike that i use it's not like i'm out there hitting the pavement and running marathons but my feet are so disastrously designed by god that i like i am in agony anytime i'm doing any sort of real uh any any sort of real working out if i don't wear these specific shoes um uh but more more recently i have added to my uh my uh repertoire of you know regular walking around shoes a pair of um uh they're john varvatos late laceless sneakers and they're like the problem with these shoes is that they're usually like 200 bucks and i just refuse to pay that much money for a pair of the end of a life cycle on one of these pairs of shoes and just start looking on like ebay and amazon like trying to find um uh find them on sale uh and get them for you know a more a more reasonable like i don't know 70 bucks or something what makes them so special nothing nothing at all i just like i just kind of like how they look and the the i like the special tech that's not technology no it's not technology it's an entirely aesthetic because i want i want i like i like laceless sneakers i like laceless sneakers i think they are they they they are but it's entirely like i i like the look and feel of these this specific shoe this one specific shoe that they really don't make that many of and is like never on sale and as is therefore very expensive all the time but when i find it on sale i usually buy a pair because i'm like well i'm gonna need these
JVL00:10:45at some point i so i'm such a sucker for technology that i i have followed most of the rachis i don't know if you remember the minimalist nike running shoes in the mid 90s there was uh we went through the vibram five fingers phase of attempting to be like barefoot running do you remember this oh yeah and where everybody's wearing these they had like little toe there
Sonny00:11:12were shoe gloves they were like shoe gloves yeah shoe gloves and everybody was like that's that's
JVL00:11:17the secret to all this stuff is everybody should be running barefoot and in their vibrams uh and went and absolutely revolutionized and took us in the opposite direction we literally went from uh the era of everybody should be running barefoot to everybody should be running on four inches of foam everybody should be running on platform shoes which is what the hokas are basically uh and but they've proved so successful that everybody has changed their designs and is chasing hoka now hoka literally reoriented things i will say one thing though uh so for tennis my preferred tennis shoe in the early 1990s was the wilson pro staff both tennis players i don't know if you ever wore the wilson pro staffs when you play 100 and in the mid 2000s i was looking for a new pair of tennis shoes and i i mentioned to a guy at a pro shop uh man i loved those wilson pro staffs and he said to me you know you could still get them i said what he said yeah wilson still makes them they just it's because you've got you know a bazillion 50 and 50 year olds and ups who love their wilson tennis shoes but nobody stocks them in a store you just gotta order them direct from wilson and son of a bitch if i didn't do it and i ordered my wilson pro staffs and i got them and they were absolutely not as comfortable as modern shoes absolutely not as i was like oh so this and so i wonder sonny if you were to abandon your sambas and try a modern shoe if you would say to yourself holy crap this is so
Sonny00:13:00much more comfortable my feet don't hurt anymore well i don't it's not like i work out in my sambas i like again i have like workout i have workout specific new balances that i wear it's like the only thing i or if i'm if i'm going if i know i'm going to be walking for an exceptionally long period of time i'll wear those because it's like it's that's the shoe that i wear uh but the but no i i like i'm i mean again are fine for just walking around like just just going to going into the office just hanging out shoes hanging out shoes you know they're they're totally fine i don't know i don't i don't i'm not a i'm not a big believer in shoe technology i don't i don't i i i just i just need something on my feet that uh that that protect me from the glass i don't want to step on glass
JVL00:13:46walking around so neither of you have ever dabbled in shoe collecting do you know anybody who has
Mike00:13:54it's like it's i feel like it's like one of these things where i've read a trend piece or two like you know in the new york times or something like that about uh about this like new obsession that people have um but of course the other thing is like when i worked in the shoe store to bring this all around to to where we were at the beginning of this like there were people who would buy like i could see that they were um sort of quality wise inferior shoes but they it was like all aesthetic and like that was people just put a premium on that sort of thing and it's like it's all like it is the sort of like dodge viper of uh of shoes you know those like the the sort of like two hundred dollar nike shoes that just look really cool like that that seems to be that's my understanding of like what people are really into when it comes to shoe collecting just how it looks yeah and because again they're not to be worn right right i guess you're right yeah no it's it is all aesthetic so i again i don't get it
JVL00:14:54it doesn't like what's the point so i'm on i'm on stock x right now and i am looking at a jordan one og unc 1985 uh and it he wore it he wore it no okay so this is 1985 this is after he's been drafted oh yeah of course and it is in the unc colors it is a nike high top and it has the old air jordan logo pre-jump man ah and the current bid on this thing which again looks like it has never been worn is 484 dollars but that's not nothing the jordan og chicago right now uh has a sales price and this really looks like the shoe from the movie is 35 000 yeah it's wild i wow i i think we've solved all of our problems
Mike00:15:54if we're selling shoes for 35 000 i mean it's like any other collector's market it's it is
Sonny00:16:00entirely it what happens is you have a thing that 10 years or 15 years or 20 years down the line people realize oh i want that thing and they and nobody kept nobody kept the thing in the original package same with star wars toys it's the same with action comics number one i mean like it just like you don't you don't have the thing because you know nobody realized that oh for this thing to be worth money you have to keep the box and you have to keep it in the box and you have to never wear it so you just end up finding a warehouse full of them somewhere and that's it
JVL00:16:29no but the the trick is you have to know what the thing is because you know 99.9 of things nobody
Sonny00:16:35ever wants again well but that's what i'm saying it's like it's a thing nobody expects to be like i get like the reason that all the the baseball cards in my garage are worth kindling money like literally would be more valuable for me to just light them on fire if i was starting a fire um is is that in the 1980s everyone was like oh baseball cards are a thing we got to collect you got to keep those and they're gonna be they're gonna be valuable it's you got to be
Mike00:17:02valuable so you want to hold on to that you got it's the thing so millions of people held on to
Sonny00:17:06them it's the thing it's the things you don't expect to to and that's why my dogma dvd is the most valuable thing i know i own why it's got a print and you can't get it i'm sure it's fine
?00:17:24We'll see you next time.
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