Welcome to the first installment of the new series brought to you by Def Pen Radio and Kicks Ova Everything; Kickin’ it With Def Pen: Wear Your Kicks. This is also apart of “Wear Your Kicks Wednesday” a new hashtag to be implemented on social media; Twitter and Instagram. Follow @DaReal_KOE on both platforms and us the hashtag #WYKW.
This series is all about showcasing your kick collection and stressing the fact to ‘wear your kicks’. I am a firm believer in wearing your kicks especially if you spent your hard earn money to purchase these sneakers. Some may disagree due to the fact that leaving shoes DS (Dead stock) for a while is the thing to do. Well, not here.
Each week I will be posting a pair of sneakers from my own personal collection so to speak and a brief story behind the shoe. For example, the date they released, what I went through to get that pair of sneakers and what they mean to me because I buy sneakers I like.
Also with this series I will be accepting emails from people to submit their own photos and a brief story behind the sneakers that will be posted for the ‘Wear Your Kicks’ series because here at Def Pen Radio we are for the people. To submit please contact via: email @ [email protected]
With that being said after the jump you will be introduced to the first sneaker thats going to start this series, the Air Jordan 7 Retro Year Of The Rabbit.
Air Jordan 7 Retro “Year Of The Rabbit”.
Where do I even begin with this sneaker? Well the day before these released is when I made up my mind in purchasing. Living in New Jersey at this point there were a few releases I had to make my way back to NYC to pick up especially any releases that was of this magnitude like the “YOTRs”. May 6th, 2011 is the date to be exact since these were expected to drop on the 7th. My good friend and one of Def Pen Radio’s own Dame already decided on purchasing so I planned to meet up with him to camp out.
Before I did that I went to my fathers job to get the rest of the money I needed for the sneakers.
The store Dame and I were meeting up at was House of Hoops on 34th street which is one of the premier sneaker stores in NYC to get limited sneakers from but with a price. That price being your time because you had to camp out. Camp out is exactly what we did. I met up with Dame at about 5-5:30pm to wait on line.
Usually when I camped out I would periodically check the count of people ahead of me to make sure me waiting on a line was worth my time. In this case it was, obviously.
Now I know what you guys are thinking, “You waited on line at 5-5:30 so Im assuming its a midnight release”. Well in this situation the store was not releasing the shoes until the morning of when the store opened. Usually on certain release days HoH opens at 7, 7:30 so yeah, we waited online from 5-5:30pm to about 7:30 am.
Fast forward to about a half hour or even a hour left before the store opened people on line have decided maybe it is time we form an organized line so the process runs smoothly. To think this was too good to be true was exactly what happened here because there is alway that one group of people who ruins it everybody.
Being from NYC you come across individuals at sneaker campouts who are resellers and this was no different. apparently there was a group of people who weren’t on line but made it their business to still attend the release day as if they were waiting over night like the rest of us.
At this point I am already fed up because of camping over night and just wanting to get this experience over with. So as the store opens and the manager patrols the activity going on outside I noticed little by little the group on the outside of the line were getting in the store before Dame and I.
This is when things for me got taken to another level because its not about just the sneakers its about the time and dedication I spent waiting for them and I was not about to end up with no shoes or not my size.
So after about a few minutes I got fed up, if people were going to let these dudes skip I figured why not I might as well join in and skip as well. Funny thing is now that I skipped everybody felt they must take it upon themselves to say something to me. YEAH, OKAY.
Meanwhile Dame was going thru his own little problem, he ended up getting into a confrontation with someone on the line as well because they tried to skip him. So we asked if he really felt like if there was a problem we can step off line and handle it. He didn’t want to take it there so that was that.
I ended up with my pair as you can see and Dame got his but had to get another size to do a size swap.
Take a look at the photos I took and let me know your thoughts. How do you feel about the Air Jordan 7 Retro “YOTR”.
Oh yeah its 2014, wear your kicks and stop tying your laces, grow up.
