One of the most unthinkable events in sneaker history happened this morning. No, a release wasn't marred by violence, and no one had their sneakers physically taken from their person — but New York City, the cultural home of the Air Force 1 (along with Baltimore) and the original home of Supreme, was excluded from the Supreme x Nike AF1 drop.
After months of leaked images and a speculated release date, Supreme announced around 6 p.m. last night that it would finally put out its pack of three AF1 Highs — red, black, and white — today. Oddly enough, the brand's flagship store, located on Lafayette Street in NYC's SoHo neighborhood, was left off the list of locations set to carry the sneakers. Tri-State Area residents were left to try their luck online at 11 a.m. with everyone else.
According to Supreme, "Due to unforeseen circumstances, AF1 High will NOT be sold in our NY store." It didn't take much deductive reasoning to figure out why this was the case. Earlier this year, the shop had to cancel its Nike Air Foamposite One release due to rioting and unsavory behavior that went down in front of its shop.
When this happened, there was talk of the hype being too real, there were too many leaked images, or kids from "Uptown" getting rowdy in the line. All of these things might have been true, but there wasn't a simple answer to why Foamposites, another NYC staple, couldn't be sold in New York. To be truthful, there's no one person to blame for the madness that happened around the Foams or Supreme not feeling confident enough to release its Air Forces — nicknamed "Uptowns" for a reason, they came to prominence in Harlem in the '80s — at its birthplace.
We've all become too crazy for sneakers, and it's not because we love them more than ever at this moment.
We've all become too crazy for sneakers, and it's not because we love them more than ever at this moment. The money behind the resale market is too real. Need proof? The AF1s, less than a half hour after they were put on Supreme's website, were already available on the secondary market. It's become a catalyst to make everything so much more turbo when a sneaker is set to come out.
It's also easy to point to us, the sneaker blogs, and say that we're to blame for the demand over anything limited, and I'm not saying that's not true. People love hyped-up sneakers, and we need people to read our website to pay the bills, so we're going to write anything (credibly sourced) about them.
This makes the information so much more obtainable. Anyone who really wants them, even if they're for personal wear, knows the release date. The images will get posted all over Instagram and Twitter by everyone who's trying to become a sneaker #influencer or by those, once again, who just like them. And when the release actually happens it becomes a minutes-long free-for-all with only a select few actually coming up on anything, especially in their size.
It's now come to the point where stores are afraid to release their sneakers in-store, they're in fear that their websites will crash, and the city that made a sneaker famous can't even stock the pairs. And, to be honest, it doesn't look like things are going to get better. It just leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of anyone who wants sneaker culture to be something more than a faceless, digital-only interaction where the only winners are the bots.
If you love sneakers, by all means, go ahead and post them on your social media feed, read about them on sneaker blogs, try your hardest to procure them. Just don't act up when it comes to getting your pair, and don't get mad when they sell out. It's going to happen anyway.
Imagine if they had to cancel sneaker conventions, parties, and meet-ups because everyone was getting too crazy? If you get the sneakers — cool. Just recognize that no one is going to stop blogging about sneakers, posting them on Instagram, or wanting to resell them. But maybe we can change the way we act when something finally comes out. Buying shoes that pay homage to the city that made them cultural icons shouldn't be a huge deal. As this release proved, New York's scene is in a state of flux, but we don't have to change it for the worse.
Matt Welty is an editorial assistant at Complex and he didn't try and get a pair of Supreme x Air Force 1s online. You can follow him on Twitter here.
