As an avid consumer of all things kicks I spend a lot of time watching documentaries. The majority of sneaker culture documentaries utilize the same people over and over and tell the same stories. The narrative is redundant and tends to focus on two basic topics:
- Michael Jordan created sneaker culture – which isn’t true.
- Kids die over sneakers – which is misleading.
The recent documentary One Man and His Shoes delivered the same story already told in every Jordan documentary. I watched the movie last night in hopes that I would be hipped to something new. This is hard to do as I’ve read so many books and watched so many documentaries that I’m well versed in the story of Nike and the story of sneakers. Most important I grew up in the culture and lived the transition to sneakers as everyday wear.
The documentary, which can be watched On Demand via Vice, has a trailer below. I’m not writing this to diss the doc. The film featured some of my favorite writers in Russ Bengtson and Scoop Jackson and interviews with sneaker history documentarians like Bobbito Garcia, but unless you’re a novice or new to sneaker history there isn’t anything new here. Actually there is one point where Jumpman Bostic is in the documentary. I would have preferred thirty minutes of just Jumpman Bostic.
One Man and His Shoes makes an effort to place the onus on Nike and Jordan Brand for kids getting robbed. This is a trigger for me because I lived through the Starter/Jordan robbing phase and now I’m a parent with teen and almost teen kids. My kids have access to every sneaker because I’m in the industry. My kids are homeschooled, which has created children who don’t care about “cool”. They are just as cool with Greats Brand as they are with Jordans. As a matter of fact they don’t ask for sneakers. I force my taste on them because I buy all of the clothes. I make this statement not as a comparison, but to say that in the film they discuss the death of a young adult who was murdered for his Jordans.
In the film the mom shows the picture he took prior to his death. I am not shaming or placing any blame on the brother who died. The guys who killed him are solely at fault. This was not a case of a kid wearing a pair and getting jumped or shot. The picture in the documentary was of 4 pair of Jordan 11 Breds on a backseat.
- I’m a reseller. I don’t go out on Jordan 11 days to buy. I avoid major drops because it’s understood that the potential for being robbed or killed is exponentially higher with the 11.
- The brother had three or four pair in the picture lined up across his backseat.
- You can’t get multiple pair without a backdoor, bot or hook up. The guy in the doc was probably a reseller. If he was just a fan, and bought multiple pair, he still shouldn’t have been killed.
- We have no idea what happened and I shouldn’t speculate, but in the same store were another 1000 pair of shoes dude could have purchased. Would he have been killed for buying four pair of NMD’s? Probably not and once again I’m not blaming him and I’m not blaming a billion dollar company for catering to their shareholders.
In the trailer below you can see the direction of the film. In the film those interviewed state the obvious that Nike and Jordan Brand hold responsibility, but the buyer and the murderers are all culpable in this death. Ultimately, sneaker culture is dominated by manipulation, but a brand has no responsibility to anything except its shareholders. That’s how business works.
It sucks, but businesses are created to make money.
I believe businesses can make money and be socially and environmentally responsible and still be profitable, but I can’t place my values on anyone else. One Man and His Shoes in this sense becomes a bit like propaganda.
In comparison there is a smaller series From the Feet Up, that has to be watched on Instagram and Facebook that I think needs to become a documentary picked up by Netflix or Vice. The documentary is based on a presentation of curated artifacts from Hip-Hop and Sneaker history. I discussed the project on the site last year:
For the Culture! From The Feet Up: Sneakers, Hip-Hop, and New York…
The exhibition has been compiled and turned into a documentary that allows the curators to discuss how the project was conceived and brought to fruition.
In the video below one of the curators, Sean Williams, introduces a bit of history that I wasn’t aware of. He discusses the fact that the song My adidas, by Run DMC was a response record to a song called Felon Shoes. I’ve been in the sneaker business forever, and never knew this. From the Feet Up covers aspects that build the culture as opposed to One Man and His Shoes creating a furor over what I think is ultimately an issue (kids dying or obsessing over shoes marketed to create unconscious consumerism) that stems from: parenting decisions and of course systemic economic and race issues.
You can learn more about From the Feet Up by visiting the links below.
The link to the IGTV series is here
http://instagram.com/tour_ftfu/channel/
I really hope that the documentary by the curators of From the Feet Up earns a deal from Netflix. It could be groundbreaking in sneaker culture as it delivers a narrative that is unlike anything else, except maybe Rock, Rubber, 45s which is Bobbito’s life story that dives into sneaker culture as well.
