Besides thousands upon thousands of words for content, one of the byproducts of hanging out with the owner of Urban Necessities for a few days back in 2016 resulted in one of the most interesting experiences of my (sneaker) life. At the time, we were trying to work on a deal that eventually fell through, but that didn’t derail the events I’m about to tell you about. It started a few weeks after my visit to Las Vegas, when I told him my next stop was Hawaii, where he gave the name of a couple sneaker shops he thought would be interested in my sneaker grading software. One of those on the list was ‘The BVNK’.
So we went to Hawaii and did all of the Hawaii things…beaches, shaved ice, short ribs, hikes, etc. Midway through the trip, I dragged a buddy with me to The BVNK and when we pulled up to an empty parking lot, a dead silent interior, and a handful of dudes just talking like I was trespassing, I felt like I was back in one of those snooty shops in New York. Whatever. No mind.
Eventually, one of the guys came over and I name-dropped Jayssee. He was all smiles for a few minutes, but when I showed him the software he kinda drifted off again. He thanked me for my time, gave me a couple shirts and hats, and went back to his conversation with the other dudes inside. My buddy and I drifted back toward the wall, talking about a few pairs, half-awkward, fully-ready to leave.
Then a guy walked in.
He looked like he had just come from a job site. Dirty white shirt. Cargo shorts. Work boots. Dad hat. He was carrying a white plastic grocery bag. There’s no nice way to say it other than he looked completely out of place.
The guy ambled around for a minute, then walked to the counter and asked a question that had me leaning in: “Do you know anything about old sneakers? I found a storage unit full of shoes and I don’t know what to do with them.”
He pulled a very old pair of ACG Baltoros out of the bag and put them on the counter.
The guy behind the counter barely looked at them. He said something to the effect of “nah, we don’t mess with stuff like that.” The construction dude said ‘thanks’, picked the shoes back up and started walking toward the door.
I followed him outside without thinking, it just felt wrong to let him walk back to a U-Haul with a grocery bag full of shoes nobody even bothered to look at. So when he slid open the rear door of the U-Haul and I spotted a handful of old sneaker boxes, I blurted out something dumb, like “hey man, I couldn’t help overhearing,” which is always how conversations start when you absolutely helped overhear. I told him I collected sneakers and I might be able to help him sort through the unit. He lit up immediately. We exchanged numbers and agreed to meet the following day.
After breakfast, I told the wife I was going to help this dude out, hopped in the rental and within a few minutes I was back on the north side of the island, pulling into a small, beat-up business park on the side of a hill. Auto repair on one side. Plumbing shop on the other. His unit sat in the middle, door open, chaos spilling out. There was junk everywhere. Darrin greeted me as I hopped out the car and within seconds my eyes had already zeroed in on the bounty of sneaker boxes along the wall…but these weren’t just boxes. These were old boxes. Jordan boxes. Nike boxes. Adidas boxes. Reebok boxes. Hell - is that a “Nike Walking” box? Mizuno boxes and New Balance boxes. Coke boxes. Hundreds of them. Soft, warped, misshapen from humidity. But boxes, nonetheless. Almost every single pair was in a size 12 or higher, so, you know, nothing I could wear. I secretly thanked god for that (because how in the hell am I NOT going to try to buy this guys whole stash?).
The first box I picked up felt…wrong. The cardboard had that sheen you only see when moisture has been doing its thing for a long time. When I shook it, something inside shifted. Not solid. Not liquid. Something in between.
I opened it.
It was a pair of original Air Max 180 Barkleys. The uppers were near immaculate. But…the midsoles were gone. Not cracked. But Gone. The rubber outsole flopped loose, still attached to the air unit. Inside the box was what used to be polyurethane. Not dust. Wet. Gooey. Humid. It felt like one of those Keebler graham cracker crusts that my aunt makes my favorite chocolate pudding pies with.
It was the first time I’d ever seen a sneaker in that shape. I mean, sure, I had seen pictures. But the pictures made it seem that it was dust, dust. Not like gooey, sticky dust.
As I’m trying to wrap my mind around what I’m looking at - Darrin asked me what they were worth.
I stumbled a bit. I told him what the shoe was, I attempted to explain who Charles Barkley was and why the shoe mattered. And then I had to tell him the part that kinda hurt to verbalize: this pair, in this condition, wasn’t really worth much…because…fixing them would probably cost more than they’d ever be worth.
He looked deflated. I told him it was just the first box. That there might be gems. And we should keep going. He obliged.
We went through box after box. Cool shoes. Familiar shoes. Shoes I had only seen online. Stuff any sneakerhead would recognize. And a buttload of sneakers I never knew existed. A lot of it was damage from time, not use. He asked me to make two piles. One pile for those worth saving. And one pile for those with no hope.
And as much as it hurt me - The Sneaker Savant - to admit: the no-hope pile grew fast.
At some point he handed me an ice-cold Coke and we took a break. I was filthy. My hands were black and sticky with old glue and rubber and my shorts were caked in it. Dude didn’t even have a sink. This was before COVID, so ‘masks’ weren’t much of a thing, but thinking back now I was a complete idiot for not asking him for a mask.
After we got through the first batch of unknowns (I was saving the boxes I knew for last), the better stuff started to trickle through.
Bo Jacksons. Huaraches. Adidas from the 70s. Pippens. OG Jordan 4s, 5s, 6s. Nike Air Max Walkers! All decaying in their own ways. He asked about resoles and donors and costs. I gave him rough numbers and told him I knew a guy, but he’d probably cost a fortune.
There was a pair of Puma RS-100s with a floppy disk and an instruction manual. Falling apart. Rusted. Completely fascinating. Probably the first time a computer was ever part of a shoe’s story.
My favorite pair was the OG Air Max 1 - even though the midsoles were gone.
Towards very end of our run - he pulled out a paper bag. And inside was a pair of brand new 1985 Jordan 1s. Neutral grey. Hangtag still attached. Size 14. They looked like they hadn’t aged a day.
He asked me what they were worth.
At the time, ones weren’t really what they are now. I gave him a number that feels laughable in hindsight. He nodded. I could tell he was doing math.
He asked what he should sell the whole lot for. I told him I probably wouldn’t take less than five grand for the whole lot of pairs worth keeping, but also told him he was going to have a tough time trying to find a single buyer because what he had was more akin to a cleaning and construction project more than a sneaker collection. He laughed but I could tell he wanted something else from me: he asked what I would pay. I panicked a bit. I panicked because, yeah, I knew what I was looking at. But, yeah, also, I knew that I was the proper steward for the restoration of 75+ pairs of vintage sneakers. I told him I wouldn’t make an offer. I didn’t have the time. Or the resources. Or the skills. Or the stomach for it.
He thanked me for my time and, as I was about to leave, he asked if I wanted to pick a pair as thanks. Anything but the Jordan 1 or the Puma Computer shoe. I was kind of hoping he’d ask me and I knew exactly which pair I wanted: the OG Air Max 1s.
That day burned something into my brain, and it wasn’t just the chemical residue I inhaled digging through all of that sneaker decay…it was the realization that seeing one dead pair is sad. But seeing dozens is clarifying: Sneakers are perishable. And these things aren’t meant to last. They are dead much faster than almost any collectible we pretend they’re comparable to. Leather. Rubber. Glue. And none of it wants to live forever…especially in hot and humid weather.
I’ve spent years talking about preservation. Designing cases. Thinking about slowing time. That warehouse forced me to confront the part nobody likes to talk about. Caring about history eventually means deciding what responsibility you’re actually willing to carry…and I realized, several times over, that I’m not willing to carry almost any of it.
When I shared the guys of this story online - folks ran with it. A ton of people thought I was crazy for walking away and a bunch more thought the story was something I just made up. A guy I didn’t really know at the time - but has since become a friend (sneakerpreservationsociety) - actually did do the work of verifying the story a few months later, when he spotted some ebay activity matching my story. But overall a lot of folks online were just incredulous. “How could you just walk away?”
It’s easy to say what you’d do when the shoes aren’t in front of you, dissolving in your hands or when the opportunity isn’t slapping you in the face. But when you’re there, digging through it, experiencing it, compounding the work in your brain, you might understand the ask. I was faced with the gargantuan task of trying to rescue something I saw historical value in - I ultimately stepped away. Not because I didn’t think it was worthwhile, but because I didn’t think I’d be a very good steward. Better men that me might be up to it, but I sure wasn’t. Being open led me to that warehouse. Staying open forced me to see something most collectors never have to face. Instead of existing primarily in the ever-present FOMO of modern collecting, I had a chance to see what one of these collections might look like 30+ years down the road.
And even though I took a shortcut, I’d still say somebody had to take the long way around.