By HEATHER SALERNOTHE JOURNAL NEWSIt's just past dawn on a frigid Saturday, but Travis McGarrell of White Plains is wide awake, bundled up and headed for Niketown on East 57th Street. The store is opening two hours early for the release of the Air Jordan Retro XIIIs, and this 18-year-old is determined to snag a pair.
McGarrell's worried, though. Niketown has a limited number of shoes for sale, and he's gotten word that some fans have camped out overnight.
He considered ditching his trip into the city. Then his inner sneakerhead — as these frenzied sneaker collectors are called — began to whisper.
Maybe, the voice said, you'll luck out. Maybe there won't be that many people there.
The voice couldn't have been more wrong.
The scene outside Niketown leaves McGarrell — along with a few of the store's usually jaded security guards — stunned. Hundreds of sneakerheads are snaked around the building, with about a dozen New York City police officers posted for crowd control.
Niketown managers say the throng topped 500 at one point, though it's thinned since blue wristbands were distributed at 3:30 a.m. Rumors float that only the first 165 in line got those bands, their ticket into the store when it opens at 8 a.m. Niketown won't confirm a number, and it's hard to tell how many buyers without bracelets are still hanging around, hoping to gain entry anyway.
"I figured I'd come and give it a shot," McGarrell says. "I never, ever thought it would be this crazy."
McGarrell might be a sneakerhead, but he's enough of a newbie to think he'll score these slammin' shoes by waiting or a mere hour or two. You see, to get kicks like this, you've really got to earn them.
You've got to be hard-core, like Joseph Butler and Matthew Shaw of Brooklyn, who spent a whopping 19 hours at Niketown.
They claimed first-in-line status at 1 p.m. Friday, spending the bitterly cold night commiserating with other sneaker fiends and alternating trips to the nearest 24-hour deli.
Butler, 23, and Shaw, 22, say they each own about 200 pairs of sneakers. This is their third weekend in a row spent in slush and snow outside New York City shops, trying to add a few more hard-to-get shoes to their stockpiles.
The Jordan Retro XIIIs are a big deal, they explain, because they're black and "altitude" green — colors not normally associated with the shoes' legendary Chicago Bulls namesake.
The friends see their hobby as fashionable fun, but not everyone shares their view.
"My wife thinks I'm crazy," Shaw says. "I talked to her last night, and she said to just call her in the morning. She's disgusted with me."
"I wear my Adidas when I rock the beat/on stage front page every show I go/it's Adidas on my feet high top or low" — Run-DMC Like collectors of sports memorabilia or comic books, sneakerheads have formed their own unique brotherhood — and yes, it is almost exclusively men.
The community has grown so much in recent years, the independent online forum Niketalk.com now boasts 4.7 million posts and more than 35,000 registered members. Competitions have started to sprout around the country, prompting sneakerheads to travel hundreds of miles to have their collections judged.
Some say that what was once an underground phenomenon has turned into hysteria. Cops were called two weeks ago to a Lower East Side shop when dozens of sneakerheads started a brawl in a scramble to get a pair of rare Nike Pigeon Dunks.
Sneaker freaks are usually young guys from urban areas, generations schooled on hip-hop and basketball culture.
They have their own lingo: Never-worn, perfectly preserved sneakers are "deadstock"; a "hyper strike" is when a company releases a few dozen shoes at only one place in the world.
Sneakerheads know the right stores in the right neighborhoods; they know the ones to go to for the latest styles and the ones to avoid because they jack prices way up. They scour Web sites looking for buys, spending hundreds, sometimes thousands, on a single purchase.
In fact, Steve Mullholand, publisher of Sole Collector magazine, claims that sneakers may be a better investment than the current stock market.
"I know a guy that has a fairly small collection, maybe 50 pairs of shoes," he says. "But I guarantee you, he could buy a Ferrari with that collection. A new one."
The Internet is littered with sneakers going for double, triple, even 10 times the retail price, depending on the shoe's vintage and condition. A pristine pair of 1985 Air Jordan I low-tops is now selling for $9,000 at InStyleShoes.com, a site owned by Mullholand.
Some sneakerheads are indiscriminate when it comes to brand, veering from hot new labels like A Bathing Ape (known as BAPE) to old-school favorites like Air Force Ones. Others are faithful to Jordans, or to the Nike Dunk, a skateboarding shoe.
There are those who gravitate toward the rarest of the rare, like a Jordan XI sample "Space Jam" that has Michael's short-lived jersey number 45 on the back. Others are fashion mavens who want to break necks walking down the street; they're drawn to a shoe's artistry, such as the pop-art styling on an Adidas Superstar that pays tribute to Andy Warhol.
Then there are sneakerheads who fall into both categories. If they can afford it, they'll buy two pairs of the same shoe: one to put on ice, the other to show off and wear. Ironically, sneakerheads don't really care about the feature that made early sneakers so popular — comfort. Instead, what seems to stoke the most interest is exclusivity.
Shoe manufacturers often fuel a buzz for newer sneakers by releasing limited quantities; Nike is the master of this strategy.
"We'll sometimes do regional colors, darker on the East Coast, lighter on the West Coast," says Jordan brand manager Roman Vega. "It creates more demand for us. You'd have to call a friend to get it for you or fly there. It helps keep the brand hot."
So when a sneakerhead drops a ton of cash on Nike NYC Pigeon Dunks, he's also buying the assurance that only a reported 150 people in the world will have the same shoe.
"If you have one of those (limited editions), nobody else in your high school will have them. No one else in your state will have them," Mullholand says. "You're guaranteed people will go, 'Are you kidding me?' "
And while the unenlightened wouldn't know an All Star from an Air Max, sneakerheads can spot a sweet shoe in an instant.
"You can tell when someone knows what you're wearing," says Josh Rubin, a Manhattan-based designer whose blog about hip products, CoolHunting.com, has a section devoted to sneakers.
"You get like a nod, kind of showing respect."
"Rock my Adidas, never rock Filas" — Beastie Boys Jeremie Harris of New Rochelle leads the way to the dorm room that houses the sneaker collection of his New York University classmate Mohammad Mohammad.
Mohammad's the true sneakerhead of the two, though Harris did stand outside Barneys New York for hours with his friend last month to snag some Kidrobot Air Max Is. With only an estimated 250 released worldwide, Harris quickly sold the $150 pink-and-black shoes on eBay to a buyer in Singapore for $400.
Even with the lure of fast cash, Mohammad wouldn't dream of letting his Kidrobots go — not after waiting in line for nearly a full day to get them. He hasn't laced up the shoes, and he's not ever planning to wear them.
He's never even slipped them on his feet.
"I'm keeping mine," he says. "After what I went through, these are a memory piece."
Mohammad, who's 18 and from Jackson Heights, works part-time at Banana Republic to help pay for his sneaker fixes. The job lets him do spontaneous things like plunk down $400 for Nike "Unkle" Dunks, which he did after fruitlessly searching for them online and then spotting them at a NoLita store.
He's not into Jordans anymore, and he hates Adidas: "They're the ugliest sneakers I've ever seen in my life."
Now Mohammad says he's on the verge of becoming a "Dunkaholic."
"Once you get into it," he says, "you can't stop."
"I said give me two pair/cause I need two pair/So I can get to stompin' in my Air Force Ones" — Nelly Just one subway stop away, at the corner of Broadway and Bleecker, is a basement boutique called Nom de Guerre. It's known for having hard-to-find sneakers, and appropriately, the store itself is pretty hard to find.
The only sign of it at street level is its name stenciled on the sidewalk, in front of a dark stairwell that leads to a narrow corridor tunneled beneath a Swatch watch outlet. Entering Nom de Guerre through the first steel door on the right, you see racks of cutting-edge T-shirts and pricey designer jeans — but not a single sneaker.
So this is the place where Nas, Busta Rhymes and Kanye West come to update their vast collections? The store where — just a few weeks after it opened — Jude Law dropped by to scoop up $600 vintage Dunks?
Apparently so, if the shop's constantly ringing phone is any clue. Each time Nom de Guerre partner Wil Whitney picks up, he repeats the same thing: He's sold out of Nike Air Max 180s.
"We're trying to get a dozen more, but it doesn't look good," he tells one caller.
Whitney heads out the door and wanders down that dimly lit hallway. He unlocks another steel door to reveal a shoebox-size room. It's only a few shelves with a few dozen shoes, but a sneakerhead would call it nirvana.
None of these sneakers has a price tag, but you don't need one to know you won't find a bargain here. A glass case shows off the most valuable merchandise, including $800 Nike Air Forces made as a Roc-A-Fella Records promotion.
"So they were never for sale to the public," says Whitney, explaining the high cost.
Right now, Whitney says the store's owners are trying to figure out how to discourage sneaker resellers — those in the game just to make money, spoilers who'll take a true fan's place in line only to sell a hard-to-get sneaker for a huge profit.
The store is trying to compile a "hold" list, a roster of regulars who won't have to wait with the crowd at a sneaker release.
That way, Nom de Guerre might avoid situations like the one last week in which 40 customers turned up for 12 pairs of one-piece Laser Dunks.
"When that happens, there aren't a lot of happy people," Whitney says.
"And I be gettin' Nikes before they even get released" — FabolousSneakers first gained cultural prominence in the 1950s, when James Dean was photographed in Levis and white athletic shoes. Last year, 493 million pairs were sold for a total of $16 billion.
But the start of the sneakerhead craze can be traced to the mid-1980s, when Michael Jordan put out his first shoe and changed the industry forever. Americans soon had no problem buying multiple pairs and shelling out three figures for each one.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Air Jordan; Nike just unveiled the $175 Jordan XX to mark the occasion.
"I was an anomaly of society when I had five, six pairs of sneakers under my bed in 1981," says Bobbito Garcia, author of "Where'd You Get Those? New York City's Sneaker Culture: 1960-1987."
"That's like a small amount of sneakers to have now for a yuppie who works at Goldman Sachs."
Adam Goldstein, a Los Angeles disc jockey who goes by the handle DJ A.M., describes the current sneaker mania this way: "It's like Pokémon for adults."
Goldstein's own collection tops 500: Most are carefully boxed, marked with a Polaroid picture and stored in his garage. Among his prized possessions are black-and-white Jordan I's (purchase price: $800) and an original pair of never-worn, shell-toe Adidas from 1987, like the ones favored by pioneer rap group Run-DMC.
About 30 favorites are displayed like museum pieces on a "shoe wall" in the Hollywood Hills home he recently moved into with his fiancée, "Simple Life" star Nicole Richie.
"I had it in my old house, and she encouraged me to put it back up," Goldstein says. He laughs that Richie, famous for her own shopaholic tendencies, can "definitely relate" to his obsession.
"Guys don't get to accessorize the way girls do," he says. "We have shoes, that's what we have… They kind of represent your taste."
"Had to scuffle with freaks/I'm a addict for sneakers" — NasAt exactly 8 a.m., Niketown's doors swing open and security lets in the first 10 customers in line.
The chosen few dart inside, arms waving triumphantly. War whoops ricochet around the showroom as they hold up their hard-won Jordan Retro XIIIs.
"We're the top 10, baby! Whoo!" shouts one.
Sales clerk Keri Childs of Mount Vernon cracks up.
"I was on the train this morning and I heard four guys talking about coming here," she says. "I didn't say anything, but I was like, 'You're gonna be too late.'"
Joseph Butler hands a box of size 9s back to a clerk, who sighs and heads back to the stockroom.
"Sorry, man!" calls Butler, looking a bit sheepish. "You've got to have that perfect box, and that one's all smashed up."
As he heads for the register, Butler pauses to pull out his cell and plug in the number of a guy named Tony, a sneakerhead behind him in line who seems to have connections.
"I've got to buy more sneakers off him," Butler mutters.
Meanwhile, Travis McGarrell is nowhere to be found. He's at Grand Central Terminal, waiting for the next train back to White Plains. But he's not headed home.
As soon as he saw the crowd at Niketown, he got on the phone and dispatched a friend to wait at the Galleria mall.
The Foot Action there is opening soon, and McGarrell is hoping to grab the Jordans there.
After all, even a rookie sneakerhead knows enough to have a Plan B.
