Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Random Shoes I Owned - Week 2


After Murdock shared his tales of those sweet Tropicana Orange delights that graced his feet circa 1987, I immediately knew exactly the shoes from my own past that would fit the bill for this (hopefully) weekly bit - the signature shoe of Barry Sanders, the Nike Air Zoom Turf Trainers.

The year was 1993. I was the only kid in my southeastern Wisconsin high school with the good sense to have idolized electric running back Barry Sanders since he broke into the league. Therefore it was only natural that I be the one to be strutting the hallways in his signature shoe. I pleaded with my parents to get these, and they offered me a low-interest loan (to be paid off in yard work) to possess these gunboats.

Goddamn I loved these shoes. The styling holds up even today. In fact these were popular enough that Nike actually re-released these in limited quantity earlier this decade. Would that I had known. And the soles had this cool hypnotic, vertigo-inducing pattern too.

I felt hella fast in 'em, and actually went looking for somewhere for where I could run on artifical turf, just to get the full effect. And I came up short up until late 1995 on the U of Minn campus when some buds and I used the marching band turf practice area for some pickup football one afternoon. By then these babies were worn out, but I still made cuts and spins down the field with a childlike glee. Good times, good times.

3 comments:

  1. Being that I drank powdered milk and wore handme-down toughskin jeans there was no way in fuck I was ever getting anything as sweet as this.

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  2. Clown, didn't you just walk around in big floppy shoes?

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  3. No, my father spent the money set aside for my floppy shoes on his own trax velcro shoes and schlitz.

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