Off the Beach, Off the Wall: Surfing heads inland...

Pierre André Senizergues, etnies founder: In the 1960s, surfers were riding skateboards barefoot by the beach.

Ken Block, DC Shoes co-founder: When I started skating in the ’70s, skateboarding was so new, there weren’t really skate-specific shoes.

Senizergues: I bought cheap Monoprix shoes—they were like the French Kmart. I remember staying in my garage gluing all the time. I’d buy a piece of leather and I would try to put it on top of the side of shoes. And I would put extra rubber in. And the shoes would still always fall apart.

Steve Van Doren, Vans: Only three companies in the 1900s made vulcanized shoes: Keds, Converse, and a company that went out of business.

Ben Preuss, adidas: Shelltoes have always been used by skaters, Converse have always been used by skaters.

Tony Hawk, skate legend: The biggest issue with Chuck Taylors is that you would burn through the side doing ollies right away, and through the toes doing kneeslides.

Van Doren: My dad started Vans in 1966—by the mid-’70s Tony Alva and Stacy Peralta were wearing our shoes.

Stacy Peralta, skate legend: Not only were they the first on the scene, but they supported skateboarding when no other shoe companies wanted to be involved.

Van Doren: The first skate shoe was born on March 18, 1976. We put an Off the Wall heel label on, a term the guys used when they were skating pools. It was basically a canvas upper with a vulcanized sole. We called it the Style 95.

Hawk: I thought I became a better skater when I finally got a pair of Vans. I was happy to just stare at the box when I brought them home.

Van Doren: The next shoe was the Style 36 in ’77. It had leather on the front and the back and had a side stripe—now it’s called the Old Skool.

Steve Caballero, skate legend: When I first went to the skate park in 1978, I saw people wearing Vans. I got some of the low-tops—the Old Skools—first. The grooves hit really nice on the grip tape.

Kevin Imamura, Nike: The three shoes that you would see most often through the late ’70s were Jack Purcells or Chuck Taylors, Vans, and Nike Blazers.

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Hitting the Road: Pool and vert give way to street skating...

Van Doren: The very first skater we actually signed for a contract was Stacy Peralta—we were paying him $300 a month. Tony was a character. We would pay him, and the next six months he was in Vans, and all of a sudden you’d see him in Nikes; he was on and off all the time.

Caballero: When I first got sponsored by Powell Skateboards, I was buying Vans. Stacy Peralta was the coach and had a hookup with them, and he would get shoes from them and give them to us. By around 1985, Vans wasn’t really supporting skaters anymore. They were into BMX and the breakdance movement. I started wearing Converse and Pumas.

Van Doren: We had some financial problems in the mid-’80s. My uncle was putting all the money into development of shoes for running, basketball, soccer, wrestling, skydiving, breakdancing—all of these shoes that Vans weren’t known for. Companies like Vision Street Wear came on the road. Vision had the energy and the attitude. They had Gator [Mark Rogowski] and different riders who were a big thing.

Imamura: [The mid-1980s] was basically the birth of street skating, the development of the ollie on flat ground and that requiring a shoe that’s going to not blow out so quickly. Previously, people were skating in shoes that were a combination of canvas and suede. Traditional vulcanized construction, while it provides a grippier feel, isn’t always the most forgiving on your feet.

Kelly Bird, Lakai brand manager: I remember having tons of Converse Weapons. Shelltoes were pretty big back then because they had a lot of durability with that rubber toe. Then it kind of evolved into Airwalk. Looking back, I don’t know how anybody skated in those shoes. They were so stiff.

Block: It was more of a functionality type thing than style or necessity.

Eric Koston, professional skater: My very first skate shoes were some Airwalks. They had this “A” on the side and a spider-web print. You could get them at Mervin’s for like 20 bucks, around 1986.

Hawk: Airwalk was born out of skating, but they hit their biggest stride as skateboarding’s popularity was waning. They were open to new ideas and willing to try anything. And I was thankful to be getting paid by any of my sponsors at all.

Gentry Humphrey, Jordan Brand footwear director: Then in 1985/’86, we introduced the very first Air Jordan.

Block: The original Jordans really influenced the way skateboard shoes are today. The simple sole design, the way that the panels on the upper works, that type of thing. And that evolved into the Dunk, and evolved into many of the skateboard shoes that are out today.

Senizergues: Etnies started in ’86. I was competing with Vans, VISION, Airwalk, the big Kahunas. And I was just the little guy, David against three goliaths. But the one thing I realized was the future of skateboard shoes had to do with performance. We came up with a special rubber called Indy Goodyear Rubber, which was used for race cars. We had a sole that was four or five times stronger than the regular sole. My shoelace was getting cut doing all those different tricks. I figured out the way to have lace going under the upper of the shoe.

Block: The biggest brands had pro endorsements.

Senizergues: The first pro shoe we came up with debuted in ’87—the Natas. We figured there are pro shoes for basketball, why not skateboarding?

Caballero: Vans approached me and asked me to ride for the team around 1988. A year later, they offered me a shoe deal. The first shoe came out in 1989—the Caballero high-top.

Block: In the late ’80s and ’90s, if you were skateboarding, the shoes to wear were Vans, Airwalks, and Etnies.

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The Moon Boot Era: Cushioning goes overboard...

Imamura: Vans came out with Steve Caballero’s shoe, subsequently the Half Cab, which went on to become one of the most archetypal designs within skateboarding.

Caballero: Around 1991, I started noticing a lot of street skaters cutting down the shoe halfway and taping it over with duct tape and stickers. Some guys even sewed it. I was like, Why don’t we just cut the shoe down and offer them in various colors and call it the “Half Cab?” I made a lot of money all the way through the ’90s.

Bird: In the early 1990s a lot of people got back into Vans. I think people finally figured out that these shoes looked a lot better than big fucking bulletproof Airwalks or even Vision Streetwear. They looked a lot more streamlined and clean. Airwalk was so focused on how everything had to be bulletproof they made the shoes unskateable.

Angel Cabada, Supra co-founder: I used to skate suede Half Cabs all the time. I liked the style, and we didn’t need so much padding then. Then I started skating the Etnies Rap, and that was my shoe forever.

Koston: My first shoe sponsor was Airwalks, in 1992. Somebody acquired Airwalk at the point when it was huge. Then it blew out. I was riding for Vans at the same time. There were no contracts back then. It had gotten so big that I didn't even have anybody to talk to, there was no manager. I guess I could have looked up a number and say "Hey, I quit." It didn't even matter then.

Senizergues: In the early ’90s, people started wearing low-top type shoes, and that’s when we decided to totally change the direction of the line. In ’93, designers put etnies back on the map with the Lo-Cut. That set up the future of skateboard shoes.

Block: By the time we came out with DC, we had been doing a brand called 8 Ball, Droors Clothes, we did Dub. We'd gone from making shirts to technical snowboarding outerwear. In just like a three year period, the company grew very fast. We had two athletes who were very much the centerpiece of our existing brand-Danny Way and Colin McKay-and they weren't happy with their current sponsors, so we just saw an opportunity to do something new and different.

Koston: etnies got really big. I feel like every skater was wearing a navy
shoe with white shoelaces.

Imamura: DC started making shoes that were very bulky, leather-clad high tops.

Block: Before DC came along, heel cushioning was nonexistent. But in the ’90s skating transitioned to just pure street skateboarding, tricks down handrails and over stairs, big gaps. That type of skateboarding had a lot more impact on your feet. The performance and cushioning of the shoe became more of a factor than it had been before.

Bird: Skate shoes then were real basic. Not a lot of paneling, just regular cut and sew. DC introduced the idea of doing more with the upper, something that didn’t look like anything anyone else was doing at the time.

Pruess: All of a sudden the impact and issue of comfort and safety was fueling this development in skate footwear. Skaters started to skate with socks inside of their tongues because they were getting shin bangs, so people started to adjust their shoes. That ’90s phenomenon made these chubby tech shoes that helped define a new silhouette in the industry.

Van Doren: Up until ’95, we weren’t able to keep up with anything that came out that was big and puffy because we just made vulcanized stuff.

Koston: Mid-’90s, everything was real athletic-looking and bulkier. Like the more you packed on it, the better it was…but it wasn’t. You look back at them and they’re hideous. But at the time, you thought it was dope.

Bird: People that didn’t skate saw the skate shoe and thought they were more comfortable because they were bigger and bulkier and had more padding. That had a lot to do with the explosion of it.

Imamura: DC was one of the first companies that did a fat tongue at the time when people were relegated to cutting out the tongues of their old shoes and stapling them together so they could have a fatter tongue.

Block: That original look came from the hip-hop days. Run-DMC put their tongues out, or people would actually cut out a tongue from an old shoe and put it under their tongue on a new shoe.

Bird: A lot of non-skaters came into the market, and they were the ones driving the market as far as sales go.

Imamura: The X Games were going on, Nike saw an opportunity. But instead of catering to people that would best support your brand, they put it in larger chains that didn't have anything to do with skateboarding. This was at a time when Consolidated Skateboards' anti-corporate stance was at its peak. Bad timing and improper execution, and so you mix all those things together and you've just got a recipe for failure

Block: When we started, it was us [DC], etnies, Vans and Airwalks. I think those were the main ones. And then by the end of the late ’90s, there were 30 or 35 brands.

Imamura: People got very excited about making shoes because the profit margins was so much greater than hard goods.

Bird: The footwear industry blew up. People were making a lot of money off shoes but on the flip side, some people weren't making money because it was set up they only got a royalty on their shoe.

Block: X Games was on TV, Tony Hawk did his 900 and his video game came out, and skateboarding became acceptable to parents. It went from this rebellious sport to parents buying boards for their kids.

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Less Skate, More Culture: “Extreme” goes mainstream...

Pruess: A lot of brands realized that it wasn’t the technology that was going to give the skate industry its longevity—it was the lifestyle, the values, and aesthetics. You started to see sneaker shops be skate shops and collectible-sneaker heads going into skate shops because there was limited-edition stuff there.

Bird: People lining up in front of Undefeated at four in the afternoon for something that was going to be released the next day. Totally out of control.

Block: As demand continues to go further away from that pure skateboarder, that pure skateboarder looks around and says, “I’m not going to endorse those products anymore.” The biggest challenge is to grow beyond just skateboarding but to continue to be respected in skateboarding.

Imamura: You’re always going to have a certain element within skateboarding that says, “We don’t want to have anything to do with corporations,” which is the most ironic thing that anyone could ever say at this point; Vans is owned by VF Corp, DC is owned by Quiksilver, etnies’s Sole Technology is as big as a lot of corporations.

Tim Gavin, DVS co-founder: We will always cater to the mom-and-pop core shops. They’ve always had our back, and we will always have theirs.

Block: Nike’s come in the last couple years and was somehow able to get skateboarders, even though Nike has no root in skateboarding. You do things right, and you can have success.

Gavin: Skateboarding is an art and very individualized. A lot of designers are now designing shoes to certain skateboarder's personalities. You have your hip hop skaters from the urban areas, the suburban kids with the grungier look, and then you have your actual skateboarders who don't know who they are.

Bird: Nike SB have a decent amount of people that are skateboarders, but they’ll probably be the first to admit that a majority of the people buying SBs have fucking nothing to do with skateboarding.

Imamura: We started Nike SB in 2001. It was never our intent to have the shoes cost more than they’re worth. But that’s what’s going to happen if they are that coveted.

Peralta: It's unfortunate to see companies like Nike who have bought their way into skateboarding instead of paying their dues. They suck the value out of sports by throwing around money the way they do.

Gavin: Manufacturers are delusional if they say they’re catering to the skate market. Skateboarding transcended into other markets, and they started to design styles that really pertained to the outside tastemaker.

Bird: Skaters tend to be shortsighted. There is no certainty on how long you can do it-you could blow your knee out or snap your ankle and be done. This is a big reason why you see dudes on these really strange teams just for the paycheck.

Imamura: You've got the horrible economy, skate retailers that are struggling. a lot of footwear companies all scratching for their share and more skateboarders than ever. You've got two skate-themed shows on MTV, the X Games doing their thing every year, the Maloof Cup, which is the biggest prize purse in all of skateboarding's history. You've got more free public skate parks that are sponsored by different municipalities all over the country popping up every year.

Hawk: When I was growing up, a skate-shoe brand was the riskiest business you could be in. Nobody cared about skating, so they couldn’t care less about skating shoes.

Peralta: There are too many shoe companies producing too many shoes that are really all too similar.

Gavin: I think the whole double label thing has run its course. It's corny. A lot of brands are chasing the business. There is a lot of cannibalism within the market place.

Imamura: Skating’s not going anywhere. As long as boards still have grip tape to cover them, you’re still going to need a skateboarding shoe to wear.

Koston: What people are skating in now compared to the ’80s is the same shit. You just need to feel your board.

]]> Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:59:19 -0400 http://www.complex.com/SNEAKERS/Features/Grindin-An-Oral-History-of-Skate-Shoes Complex Magazine http://www.complex.com/SNEAKERS/Features/Nikes-Olympic-Kick-Game

The Summer’s Best Slip-On Sneakers

Def Tones

Clae.com ]]> Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:03:55 -0400 http://www.complex.com/SNEAKERS/Features/Def-Tones Complex Magazine http://www.complex.com/SNEAKERS/Features/The-Future-of-Sneakers

The Future of Sneakers

[!Ditto? &summarize=`6` &paginate=`1` &tpl=`Ditto_Reviews` &sortBy=`pub_date` &sortOrder=`DESC` &showInMenuOnly=`1`!] ]]> Tue, 22 Apr 2008 11:42:58 -0400 http://www.complex.com/SNEAKERS/Features/The-Future-of-Sneakers Complex Magazine http://www.complex.com/SNEAKERS/Features/Fucking-Awesome-x-etnies-Plus

Pro Skateboarder Jason Dill and etnies make an obscenely great shoe.

Fucking Awesome x etnies Plus, $110

etniesplus.com

Converse 1HUND(RED)

SK8 HI, $88
CHUKKA, $88
DENIM, $588

Available at Supreme stores.

(RIGHT TO LEFT)

STADIUM JACKET, $780
SUPREMENEWYORK.COM

ZIP-UP HOODIE, $160
SUPREMENEWYORK.COM

M-65 JACKET, $548
SUPREMENEWYORK.COM

Photograph by Brad Bridgers

Nike SB teams with Canadian shop Goodfoot on the Strange Brew pack. It’s a set of shoes and accessories that salutes the 24th anniversary of the cult-classic movie, starring Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas. Nice one. Eh?

Zoom Harbo, $55, and Zoom Team, $65, By Nike SB, 11/1.
NikeSkateboarding.com, Getonthegoodfoot.ca

Dr. Dre/Ed Lover x Puma Clyde, $120, puma.com
The most limited of the new Yo! MTV Raps line, the Dre/Lover shoe, is part of a series that includes Big Daddy Kane, MC Shan, and Doug E. Fresh. Puma starts where hip-hop began on 9/15 at alife and UNDFTD locations.

Click here to view full Yo! MTV Raps Collection