I was working yesterday when 18-year-old girl came in for a test. I got her checked in and went to do a final "pocket check" before seating her for her exam. She wore a fashionable hoodie, black leggings, and... there they were: a pair of Nike Air Jordan 4s, fire red.
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How did I know, and why did I notice? Welp, for some reason, my reddit feed started including posts from the r/sneaker subreddit. I follow very few subreddits - our city's, and a couple "mathy" ones - otherwise I just lurk and see what crosses my path.
So these "sneakerhead" posts started showing up, probably because I showed an interest in fashion or style or culture or some such at one point or another. So I was all, "what's up with all these shoes in my reddit?", "what's up with a subreddit = r/sneakers?"
I don't even remember how I came to know of Yeezys (Yeezies?) and the like. Maybe because I often breathe the same air as millennials and gen Zer's?
Anyway, in a nutshell, "sneakerheads" are people who buy, sell, and trade highly sought after shoes. They also, apparently, sometimes wear the shoes. Y'know, for street cred.
Having this parade of sneakers show up whenever I opened reddit plus having time on my hands during winter break, I googled and youtubed a bit, and learned sneaker trading is a billions of dollars industry, expected to continue to grow. This Ted Talk was well done and informative. It's 7 years old now. The phenomenon has since grown even further.
I find it rather bananas. It's like the stockmarket with no fees, no regulations. Middle school kids are playing with thousands of dollars, tens of thousands. Social media has added fuel the fire. I'm glad there was no real social media in the Beanie Baby days. I let reddit know that I'm not interested in seeing people's sneaker acquisitions/ collections, but it was kinda interesting to learn of this economic subculture.
Well, it gave me something to draw.
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Linking up the week with Mama Kat for the prompt:
4. Write a blog post inspired by the word: cost.
9 comments:
who knew? Not this old bird.
Peggy, news to me too. Now I notice these kids walking around in shoes that could cost more than my car.
The world has come a long way from black hightop Keds, hasn't it?
John, apparently so. I remember when the grocery stores sold sneakers
I don't have any clue to these shoes - I am out of the loop.
Chatty, same here. I don't think we're the target market 😊
As an old person I can't imagine an obsession with sneakers and the crazy amount people pay for them! Designer shoes were just coming into fashion when my kids were becoming adults so thankfully we missed that one!
Jeanette, I hear ya. The Ted Talk mentions a dad who feared his son was selling drugs. Nope - sneakers.
You drew that!? Definitely upload it to the reddit thread. lol Pat and I sell on ebay and we follow some resellers on YouTube. One guy made thousands of dollars off of shoes he got from an NBA friend of his. Ebay flagged his account and since he could not produce receipts for his shoes they shut his whole store down. Granted, some of the shoes were one-offs...like the only pair ever created in certain designs. But selling knock offs is a big problem. Too many of these kids get scammed. But I'm proud of that girl for actually wearing them!!
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