It was September of 1989. I was starting my first day of 6th grade at I.S. 72 in Staten Island. I was a bottom feeder or was I that which the bottom feeds on? In either case I was rocking a new pair of Voit high tops. They were white with a black outsole and a black velcro strap that wrapped around the ankle.
I can still remember my dad letting me loose at Kmart and telling me to pick out a new pair of sneakers for school. I was immediately drawn to these high tops because of the courduroy tongue. To me that was just awesome and you couldn’t tell me otherwise. Like with most new shoes, my parents bought me up until that point, I got completely high off that new shoe smell many times before the official start of school.
I wore those shoes proudly on that first day of school. I walked around with a hop in my step as if the Andy Griffith Show theme song was playing the background. When school let out I was walking home when some 7th grader behind me asked me “Hey where did you get those sneakers from, Kmart?”. My first thought to myself was “How did he know?”, but I soon realized he was laughing at my shoes. I was speechless. My ears started burning with embarrassment. It was a moment in my life that will forever be etched in my memory. I vowed that day that I would get my sneaker game tight, even though i hadn’t realized that the words sneaker, game, and tight could be strung into a term like that just yet.
I’m proud to say that I wore those Voit high tops into the ground. I was in no position to be asking for things from my parents just because what I had wasn’t cool. That’s not how my parents raised me. In the next few years I went through a pair of Stride Rite bball high tops, a pair of Spaulding low top tennis shoes, a pair of Reebok low top CXT trainers, and a pair of Reebok high top CXT trainers.
It wasn’t until the spring of ’91 that my sneaker game got officially tight when my parents bought me my first pair of Nikes. It was a pair of Nike Air Force Vs lows. They were white & black with a hint of infrared and they had an air bubble! At a whopping $55, they were the most expensive kicks my parents had bought for me and for that I will always be grateful. I still wish I kept those shoes as ragged as they became only because I’ve become more sentimental about things as I’ve gotten older. I hope one day Nike re-releases those shoes.
