The other day, while copping FIVE pairs of shoes from one of my favorite local (thriftish) spots, the lady behind the counter (who I see often) says to me 'are you a reseller?'
I kinda shrugged my shoulders and said 'nah, these are all my size. I've resold plenty of sneakers but these are really for me...'
That opened the conversation a bit...and she started digging a bit further...and we kinda got to talking about the current perception of sneakerheads (she was decidedly NOT into sneakers)...At one point, she asked when the market flipped and I told her it was when StockX and the other middlemen services started running the conversation... She asked how (meaning 'why')...and I said... 'well, it kinda went from this thing that was all about collectors to this thing that became all about money. And I'm not really about the money aspect.'
It wasn't a super deep convo, but to me, it had me thinking a bit more about what the sneaker world would be more like if the collectors had the loudest voices (and not the resellers)...what would it look like then?
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At some point in the past month, I stumbled across this column called 'Sole Mates' on @hypebeast and I gotta say...stuff like this is a breath of fresh air...for some strange reason it reminds me of that 'sneaker shopping' show on Complex (that I can't stomach), but it's just SO much more interesting than shopping.
I've only dug through a couple of posts, but to see actual people with the sneakers that they choose to collect? Yeah. Dope.
Miss me with all that 'check out what Offset just copped' or 'OMG have you seen PJ's 5000 pair collection?' Nah. IDGAF about any of that. All that shows me is that you got money...and...cool. Some of the corniest mfer's I know got money. Showing me what you're interested in is WAY more interesting than showing me what you can buy...
Anyway, just a heads up.