14 | January | 2011 | Hear Me Roar...

The Top 15 Kicks I’ve owned: by no means a definitive list, nor is this providing some sort of historical commentary on the best shoes of all time. Ya ya Jordan XI’s are the best, we all know that…

Now that I’m all but removed from the hypebeast standing in line for a shoe game, I thought it’d be fun to take a look back at the top 15 shoes I’ve ever had the pleasure of owning. I’ll talk a little bit about the shoe, where I was in my life at that time, as well as why I picked the shoe.

1996.

Olympics were in Atlanta. Michael Johnson went dumb on them sprints.

Say the name Michael Johnson. Not Jordan. Not Jackson.

Michael Johnson- what do 99.8% of people think of? Those Golden Shoes.

No one remembers what world record he beat (without googling it,) but ask anyone and they DO remember these:

I believe that this is the first year where nike really upped their Team USA game, branding all sorts of stuff from shoes to track suits. My kicks were no different featuring the USA logo on the strap.

I was still at the age where I had to beg my parents for a few months for a new shoe- so I got hip to it- buy some shoes that I could switch out the strap, and hence switch out the color. This is the mid 90’s we’re talking about so “being too matchy matchy” hadn’t been invented yet. Well, we were in the midst of inventing it. I remember Jason “I no longer participate in fashion” Spear used to obsess over finding a NY Knick themed shoe to match his jersey. It didn’t matter what the shoe looked like, it only mattered that it matched! Matching was that serious!

Red White Blue Polo? Check Red White Blue Shoe? Double CHeck

Air Adjust Force solved a buncha my problems. Instead of being able to pick up a closet full of shoes like I do now, I had to make one pair work, and last through all my outfits. The forces let me switch them bitches up:

Under the forefoot and across the top.

50 said go ‘head and switch the style up, and if they hate then let ’em hate and watch the money pile up

Here’s an example of the red strap on a black shoe:

And green (sorry for the crappy pic):

There were a few models of shoes that were strap compatible and John had a black pair, I think like these (Air Modify, nice writeup on these here:):

Minus the coke under the sole.

Please believe Johnboy and I traded all kinds of colored straps- carolina blue, black, green, orange, red, yellow. I went nuts on them straps.

I originally omitted this shoe from the list- in fact it hadn’t even entered my mind when starting this project. As I was writing up the post for my #11 shoe (ooh cliffhanger!) I came across a pic of this and was totally reminded! There’s not a lot of pictures out there but because I know Nike retros everything they’ll be back sooner than later.