Even on a 9-inch television, at the ripe old age of 10, I could tell that the ‘red’ didn’t match the red from the jersey. It was slightly off…pink, even. Almost medium rare. I had no idea what the shoe looked like in real life, but the man wearing it was executing and doing it with such style and grace that those black and pink shoes were burned into my mind for all of eternity. Probably about a centimeter on a 9-inch television.
Right around that same time, I was flooded with this image of The Terminator. There used to be this theater close to my childhood home, and every time we’d drive by, I’d look at the ‘Now Playing’ and ‘Coming Soon’ posters - and I can still see ‘The Terminator 2’ poster staring back at me. I’m sure I saw a trailer for the movie during the same NBA Finals above, but the color in the trailer and on the poster was the same. Or maybe it was from the music video. I don’t totally remember, but the same pink-ish red was there. It was like a new color had hit the mainstream, and because mainstream was everywhere, I saw it everywhere. It was impossible to avoid.
As a kid, I thought this was almost like a new discovery. A new color. A new color that the world suddenly agreed on. It wasn’t pink and it wasn’t red and it wasn’t anything in my school textbooks. But it was associated with two of the coolest people in the world: Michael Jordan and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The timing was so perfect, I thought it was intentional. Michael Jordan was a killer. Arnold wasn’t human, though, he was a cyborg. MJ WAS the goddam Terminator.
The color, itself, I wasn’t much a fan of. It felt off. Almost unintentional. Too pink. And pink was never high on my list. I was a fan of Reds and Blues and Purples. It definitely wasn’t Chicago Bulls-red. Pink was a bridge too far. That being said, I didn’t really think about it much, but it was separate from every other color I knew. It was kind of an entity unto itself. But that didn’t make MJ, Arnold, or the shoes any less cool. If anything, it made them more cool. I had a decision coming up:
NBA Finals: Bulls vs. Lakers: May/June 1991.
The Terminator 2: July 3, 1991.
My Birthday: Mid-July.
What did I ask for for my birthday? The shoes, of course.
The first time I wore them was to my cousins house. Another summer day where we’d eat cheese-block quesadillas on wheat tortillas with a splash of soy sauce for extra flavor. But today, instead of fighting over baseball cards, we’d take a dip in the river. Me (11) and my cousins (12 & 8) walked down the treacherous hill and found our spot. A cool little beach where the river wasn’t going too crazy. I was always afraid of the water, so I was a bit more reserved and kept towards the shoreline, while my cousins - much stronger swimmers - waded out a bit further. We spent a couple of hours there before deciding it was time to head back and, as soon as I finished lacing up up my Jordans…a ‘big kid’ pulled up to the beach on a quad. My cousins and I stood there and just kind of watched him doing donuts on the beach. It was cringe-fully obvious the kid was trying to show off…because before anyone had any idea what was going on, the wheels tossed dirt as he hurtled himself full speed at the river. About 4 feet in, his engine coughed, sputtered and died and the current started to take him away. Alarmed, he screamed for help. My cousins and I ran over and I distinctly remember grabbing the handlebar of this dudes quad, pulling with all my might, and seeing my brand new Jordans submerged in mud. (Yes, there are some slight embellishments to this story in my comic book origin story, but this one is the actual story).
While I was focused on MJ, I’m sure, somewhere else in the world…around the same time…there were countless other 11 year old kids watching Andre Agassi at the French Open debuting his Tech Challenge 2’s. Or…someones fancy jogging parents were lacing up (or buying - at the mall) a pair of Air Max 90’s. I never really put it together, but all of these shoes came out around the same time, and they all shared a similar shade of pinkish-red.
That shade of pinkish-red that Jordan wore was labeled ‘Infrared’.
The shade of pinkish-red that Agassi wore was labeled ‘Hot Lava’.
The shade of pinkish-red that was on the Air Max 90 was called ‘Radiant Red’.
The first two became the shoes nicknames. After several years, the 90 finally got rebranded as ‘Infrared’. And although the actual hex codes aren’t precise, they are damn close. And from that perspective…these color names made perfect sense:
Infrared/MJ: Cold. Calculating. A stone-cold Killer.
Hot Lava/Agassi: Volatile. Rebellious. Emotional.
Radiant Red/Joggers: Technical. Visible. Futuristic.
Instead of chalking it up to just design…it appears someone at Nike was working overtime on marketing through naming colors.
A year or so ago, I was talking with a Nike color designer, and he brought up a connection that I hadn’t previous considered:
“You know, a lot of those colors from the 90’s were from same batch of paint. Nike was just trying to save money on materials. They reused and repackaged the colors and gave them different names: Infrared and Hot Lava were the same. Lime and Volt were the same. They just changed the names for the athlete.”
Mind. Blown.
Whether or not the story is true (I have no idea, but I DO believe it), it gave me some new insight into something I hadn’t thought about previously: the importance of color.
The first time I remember the Jordan 6 retro as being accessible, I was living in Brooklyn. A Black and Red 6 were finally set to drop after a 20-year hiatus. Instead of the pink-ish red, they went with a more…Chicago Bull-sy rich red. I was stoked. But a lot of my sneakerhead friends weren’t.
Me: ‘Dude, we haven’t seen this shoe in 20 years, who gives a shit that it’s ‘Red Red’ and not ‘Pink-ish Red’?
Them: ‘Jay, WE care. If they gonna re-do a Jordan why don’t they do it the way it originally was?’
I ignored their POV and copped my pair anyway. I liked them. I thought they looked cool and neat and I was happy to have them.
BUT.
Gods honest truth: they just didn’t feel the same. I definitely didn’t feel like a stone cold killer. I felt more like an High School student trying to play up my accolades. Is that because the name, on the label, was ‘Varsity Red’?
That retro 6 I bought back in Brooklyn wasn’t a brick.
It just taught me something I hadn’t learned yet: sneakers don’t just carry materials and tech and marketing and history. They carry the moment you first noticed them. Infrared wasn’t powerful because it was rare or original or correct.
It was powerful because it arrived at the exact moment when Jordan and Schwarzenegger and a kid’s imagination all decided on what that color meant. And once that moment passes, you don’t get it back. You only get to remember it.
Which is kind of the point in taking the long way around…