Monthly Archives: March 2014

footwear, manufacturing, sneakers

Popdiatribe: Mad Marchness

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No sooner did I press “publish” on my post about fraying-pant-leg-condition a few weeks ago, then I discovered these Atlas boots from shoe company Artola:

Frayed pant legs no more
Frayed pant legs no more

Their design incorporates a molded leather heel piece that keeps sagging pant legs from scraping the ground. Thumbtack guy take note.

Not long after Tony Wroten’s Nike Jordan sneaker fell apart during an NBA game last week, rumours hit the net that the Jordan brand itself may discontinue in 2015. “There is absolutely no truth to this rumor…” according to Michael Jordan’s Business Manager Estee Portnoy (via smokingsection.net). What’s unclear is if MJ personally called Wroten’s agent to apologize for the sneaker blowout. NBC Sports says that didn’t happen.

Pharrell Williams hooked up with Adidas, New Balance dropped some Golf shneakers, Terra Nova was awarded a contract from the Canadian government to manufacture boots for Canadian armed forces at the company’s factory in Harbour Grace. Here in the US, American footwear manufacturing is lobbying congress over the Berry amendment, which roughly states that the Department Of Defense is required to give preference to domestically produced, manufactured or homegrown products, especially foods, clothing, fabrics and certain metals. An exemption to that amendment includes athletic shoes, which aren’t considered military-issued uniform pieces. Soldiers are wearing their own Nikes, Adidas, and other kicks not made in the U.S.A. while training. Wolverine, New Balance, Danner and Lacrosse have all come forth with compliant products that are 100% made in the U.S.A. and are relying on a growing expectation that U.S. service members should be equipped in U.S.-made gear. Read details in the International Business Times.

pop, retro

Off The Path: Millennium Club Y2K Cap

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     Though footwear and shoes will be the main focus of Popdiatry, I’ll occasionally write about other wearable gear in a feature called “Off The Path”.

For this first journey off the path, we’ll rewind about 14 years to when Y2K was a thing. The year 2000 problem had people stockpiling water and canned goods in preparation for societal collapse because the world’s computers didn’t have a four-digit data field to reflect post “2000”.

The unofficial cap of the Y2K computer bug
The unofficial cap of the Y2K computer bug

Out of that non-event came the opportunistic Club Millennium, who released a line of adjustable baseball hats sporting the Club Millenium “MM” logo, or simply “Y2K”.

Millennium Club - One Size Fits All
Millennium Club – One Size Fits All

As the world and its tech peacefully transferred from 99 to 00, many of these hats began their journey to oddball discount stores like Building #19 in New England, where my bro picked up a couple circa 2006. Building #19 was incidentally a good place to stumble upon shoes and sneakers from yesteryear. I recall seeing long dead-stock models by Puma and Adidas (including RUN DMC Adidas) on their shelves long after those models were off the market. Building #19 was known as well for their humorous advertising, with weekly circulars illustrated by a comic artist going along with their “good stuff cheap” corporate motto.

Why not have some fun with the pricing?
Why not have some fun with the pricing?
barefoot, Feet, footwear, Shoes, sneakers, Welcome

Popdiatribe: Springing Ahead

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Not a even a hot month after Manu Ginobili’s shoe instantaneously ripped apart during a live NBA game, a similar instance occurred on (Philadelphia 76ers) Tony Wroten’s foot during a game against the Pacers on March 14th. This near-viral malfunction reportedly prompted a phoned apology from Michael Jordan himself. Meanwhile,  the Nike Jordan imprint announced release of their first ever running shoe- the Flight Runner, this week.

On the baseball front,  former MLB hit-master Frank Thomas has taken issue with a Reebok re-release of some sneaks he once endorsed in the 90s- issue being this endorsement ended long ago. Read more here

The trailer for “Foot“, an independent documentary film that explores barefooting, is now online:

Footwear chain Shoe Carnival is blessing Chicago, Lansing, Detroit, Indianapolis, Grand Rapids, Chattanooga, Charlotte, and Bowling Green with new stores this month. The weekend of March 29th will be “grand-opening” day in these locales with drawings, giveaways, and prizes all weekend.

Adidas Stan Smiths returned to the marketplace looking more like the originals than ever (with Stan’s mug on the tongue), along with some very modern versions of the air-hole-striped standards.

 

customize, ingenuity, Shoes

Thumbtack Pant Leg Savers

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You know that thing where your pant leg droops down a little bit below the heal, and the bottoms of your pants begin to fray? Do you hate that? There are any number of straps, clasps, and ways to deal with this. You could roll up the bottoms a bit (meh), revel in the rippy fashion (bleh), move to a warmer climate and switch to all shorts; You could even carefully shop as to buy pants that are exactly the right length- though there is a fine line between “high-waters” and the prefect bunched up look.

Or you could:

Courtesy of a guy I saw walking down 6th ave.
Courtesy of a guy I saw walking down Avenue of the Americas

Late last year I was about to enter the NYC subway station at the corner of 42nd Street and 6th Avenue (Bryant Park). I remembered there was a decent dollar slice (of pizza) place a block south after 41st so instead I continued my stroll. That’s when I saw a guy walking with thumbtacks stuck in the backs of his shoes, keeping the bottoms of his pants bunched so they didn’t touch ground. He happened to go to that dollar slice place as well, where I was able to confirm that the thumbtacks were in fact serving the purpose of pant leg protection. I wasn’t going to further bug this fellow to get a sketchy poorly lit picture of his ingenuity, so I recreated his method in the Popdiatry photo lab.

Thumbtack Pant Leg Saver

I applaud this man’s thrifty, novel way to combat what I call fraying-pant-leg-condition. With all the custom spikes I’ve seen sticking out of footwear lately, I wouldn’t be surprised if this evolved into a hot trend some day.