Back when I grew up in the 90s the cool thing to do with your Nikes once they reached beater status was to completely mutilate the Nike air bubble. One would grab a standard ball point pen in hand and strike the air bubble with the force of a medieval guillotine. Most of the time you’d completely miss and just end up drawing a maze of lines along the outsole of your Nikes. Once you did hit paydirt and let out all 25 psi of compressed air, your reaction was almost like the awe of the caveman discovering fire.
I can still remember vividly the first time I popped my Nike Air cherry. Once they reached beater status, I did the unthinkable and completely mutilated the air bubble on my first pair of Nikes, my Air Force V lows. It was the cool thing to do, could you blame me? I wore them for a few months longer almost expecting my feet to collapse with every step. The sound of the air bubble hissing as I walked through rain splattered streets soon became music to my ears. Once I was ready to officially retire the kicks I eventually stuffed one of those small firecrackers, you bought in Chinatown, into the open puncture wound in my shoes and set it off, if you will. Part of me did wonder if the outsole of the kicks would separate from the uppers due to the force of the explosion. They didn’t but it was all about the money shot of watching the smoke billow out of the air bubble like an erupting volcano.
I wish I had a pic here of a mutilated air bubble, but unfortunately the interweb didn’t have one and I was too lazy to create an image on my own.
