Once again Wednesday is upon us ladies and gents so its time to show us some heat.
Before all of that though you know I have to provide you guys with a story and this week I think I’ll take the wheel to share one from my personal collection.
After a brief hiatus, I am back.
Kicin’ It With Def Pen: Wear Your Kicks Pt.9 which featured @Quanb24 and his story about the Nike Air Foamposite One “Red Metallic” persuaded me to finally share this specific story with it being similar, for the most part.
Last weeks #WYKW recap (5/14/114 is also available for you guys to view to see if your kicks made the cut but if they didn’t then you have a chance now to do so.
Anyways though let me not prolong and get right into this story about possibly one of the shoes to change the sneaker game for mostly the worst.
First things first, when word first hit that this sneaker was making its way onto shelves for the holiday season, you can bet every one was going to be after a pair. The Air Jordan 11 is probably the most popular amongst Jordan Brand sneakers ever.
At this point I had just left Foot Locker and was in the transitioning phase with my new job being located in Brooklyn, no longer working at Foot Locker. I had made plans after work the day before the “Concord” release to meet up with Dame of course to figure out how we were going to get our pairs. This was December 22, 2011 to be precise and the Footlocker was doing a midnight release, of course when they were still doing them. I think that needs to make a return in my opinion.
I finally make my way uptown from Brooklyn, which was a couple hours before midnight and a little early before Dame got off work, so I decide to check out the line.
I get to the Footlocker on 34st and if I was a cartoon character, someone would have had to pick my jaw up off the floor ( best way to describe the shock, and disbelief of what I saw). The line for this midnight release was unlike something I had ever seen before, Lordy, it wasn’t looking good at all.
This line which started at the back of the store, being 33rd street wrapped around the block and made its way down 34th street to almost the T-Mobile and Old Navy store. Now if you’re familiar with this Foot Locker you should know how unbelievable of a line this should be. Also not to mention it was just a single straight line you had groups of people in this line as well.
All I know is that in my head I had the thought, “ there is no way I am waiting on this line”.
SO Dame gets off work finally and when he sees the line the same thought and reaction is made. At this point we weigh our options cause we both want our pairs. He had a connect in the store who we were banking on trying to get us pairs but it was looking real slow for that idea.
We decided to wait around in the store until it closed to see if no one noticed we were in there for the release. Didn’t work so we were asked to leave but when we do we notice as we step outside we were forced right into the front of the line. Talk about luck.
We play it off lovely like we belonged there up until this security guard patrolling the line decides to rope things off and has the audacity to say we didn’t belong there. I ended up going from being apart of the front of the line to being apart of the street, (laughs).
I didn’t budge though I still stayed up front because I realized one of my homies was working the door for Foot Locker and at that point I saw the light. God must have been on my side because all of a sudden an announcement was made that they were splitting the line up, employees and non employees.
“Woooooooo” is all that was going through my head because something had told me to not get rid of the Footlocker black card (discount card) which was basically my indication to the Foot Locker that I was an employee. So instead of waiting hours on end I waited a grand total of 2 hours on line for these “Concords” on top of basically skipping the entire line.
Not too shabby if I must say so myself. Come to find out 34th street wasn’t the only place where things were hectic. The mall by house in Jersey had reportedly had a stabbing over the release of these sneakers. For a couple months due to that, the mall stopped receiving shipments for big releases like this and then the whole ticket release was enforced.
So when I said the Concords changed the sneaker game for the worst it was true, it led to the whole RSVP system and ultimately the cancellation to midnight releases.
