Sneakers and Interactive Media Culture

The Air Max 180 Artist Collaboration site designed by interactive design powerhouse, R/GA, went live a few weeks ago. On the site, users can order special fun packs which consist of one preconfigured Air Max 180 shoe and the one 180 artist collab t-shirt. The 4 artist collab t-shirts were designed by the likes of Alphonse Holtgreve, Ojas, Marcello Morandini, and Ralph Steadman.

Check out the site.

Here are some photos from tonight’s event. I’ll write more about it and post more photos later today. Good night.

The Zoom Lebron II’s are a necessity for any collection out there. It’s a basketball shoe, but could easily double as a skater shoe. Remove the ankle strap to expose the special Lebron etched pattern. The Adidas Men’s KG Attitude looks to have been inspired by the old shool classic, the Adidas Men’s Forum ST. Equal hot-ness, give them both a look. Lastly, I round out my picks with the Nike Men’s Air Max Turbulence. We all love our active life shoes and our basketball shoes, but every once in a while you need to insert a smooth, sleek running shoe into the mix. Support our sponsor and check out some of these hot kicks on Eastbay. Peace.

[also posted on niketalk.com and 5th-dimension.info]

So, I managed to make it out to the Nike 255 Event last night and I was pleasantly surprised to be on the receiving end of some free Nike giveaways. Nike hooked up a good majority of those in attendance with a free pair of Nike Dunk Low Desmonds and a free NikeiD messenger bag. Each pair of the Dunks were individually numbered with a unique laser etching along the sides of the shoe. (see above images) Every NikeiD messenger bag given out was also unique. They were made out of old Nike advertising signage materials similar to the Freitag messenger bags that are made out of old tarpulin. The giveaways and the event were hot, thanks Nike.

This posting could have easily been posted within the mobility, design, and advertising sections of this site. It’s the Asian print campaign for Lebron James’ Chamber of Fear. The main difference between the U.S. prints ads and the Japan print ads is that in Japan the user can link to a i-Mode site from the QR Code. All the user needs to do is photograph the QR Code using his/her compatible mobile phone. Once the QR Code is photographed, the user’s i-Mode (WAP) browser is launched and the user is taken directly to the nikebasketball.com site on his/her phone. It’s a cool idea, but let’s not hold our breath about QR codes popping up in U.S. advertisements anytime soon. Most U.S. mobile phones are still not QR code compatible and WAP penetration amongst users still stands at a lowly 15%.

Check out Lebron James in the Chamber of Fear.

Learn more about QR Codes.

Here are some more non-Nike old school kicks that I found on Eastbay. I’m still a big fan of the original Pump performance shoe that was introduced by Reebok back in 1989 and worn by Dee Brown when he won the Slam-Dunk Contest back in 1991. The Adidas Fleetwood Lo was also designed with Run DMC in the mid ’80s. It’s a basketball classic that features snakeskin quarter panels.

Only 150 pairs of these worldwide and they’re selling for well over $1000 on eBay.

Check out the eBay auction.

Check out Staple Design

Here are some images of sneaker necklaces from jewelry designer, Gabriel Urist.

These are some old-school Fila joints from way back in the day. If you were a breaker, a b-boy, or a graf head, then you most likely had a pair of these in your closet. Eastbay is still selling these kicks at regular price. To find out more, just click on any thumbnails below. Enjoy.

My friend, Rei, spotted a bunch of OOH wild postings from Adidas last week. They were scattered all over the downtown area of NYC. There wasn’t much to the postings except for an Adidas logo and a URL push to the www.21121.com site. Once again, not much is revealed on the site except a launch date of 2.07.05. Does anyone out there have any information about this campaign? Holler back.

Check out the site.

[found on Josh Rubin - cool hunting]

Last summer, The Hundreds visited and documented Corgishoe, a sneaker afficionado with a sneaker collection topping off in the thousands. His collection his unmatched by anyone in the game and to top it off he hasn’t even worn any of his sneakers.

Check out the site.

To celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Superstar, Adidas has put together this anniversary site tracing the history, designs, and culture around one of the world’s most famous shoes. The latest city shoe releases around this campaign include Berlin, London, Paris, New York City, Boston, Tokyo, and Buenos Aires.

Check out the site.