Today I stopped by the Bay Area Soleciety Sneaker and Apparel Expo in Tampa. I'm not nearly as involved in the sneaker community as I am in skateboarding, but I've definitely had an interest in both for my whole life. Going to something like this makes me stroll down memory lane, so I've got my story for you here along with a few photos I shot today.
Growing up in the 80's, I was lucky enough to be introduced early to music, which led me straight to rap, which set the early spark for the love of shoes, sneakers specifically. It wasn't long before I got the crave for a pair of high tops. I can still remember my first ones clearly. They were from Payless, which at the time I was too young to realize they were the Dollar General of shoes. They were so damn dope and from there it was on. Hip hop culture, breakdancing, and crazy clothes were consuming me. It would still be years before I discovered skateboarding. By the time the Jordan 1's came out, I was all about the Swoosh. My parents would pull together whatever they could to get me a new pair even though they were nearly $80 back then.
I always had skateboards as toys growing up, but it wasn't until the summer of 1986 that I realized you could do tricks on them after I saw someone in a parking lot do a street plant. From there, I was hooked. It was just a few weeks later when I learned more about skating and had to go to some weird surf shop in Panama City, FL where I lived to get a real skateboard. I remember learning about skateboarding from the BMX mags that were at the store by my house that had some skate coverage in them.
As I got deeper into skateboarding, I realized how it and hip hop culture both had great influences on each other. The steady flow of Public Enemy at the early skateboarding contests I went to brought me out of a short punk rocker and metal stage I went through.
So, for the next 20 years, I watched my two hobbies skateboarding and hip hop evolve. In that time, shoes went from everyone skating in Nike's and Converse to skate shoes soon being "invented" by etnies and Airwalk. This began the phase of any shoes that were not skate shoes being unacceptable. The Nike I once loved suddenly was something I wouldn't be caught dead in.
That was an amazing time in skateboarding where the entrepreneurial spirit was at an all time high and the birth of skateboarder owned companies began to define the industry. Meanwhile, hip hop's connection to skateboarding was very strong, mainly in the use of it in nearly every good skate video being released. I don't remember hip hop and rappers embracing skateboarding in return, though, at least beyond Wu Tang and maybe Jeru.
Over the next several years, I watched the streams cross. Hip hop artists were wearing skate clothes and shoes, then Nike SB started. I was a fierce resistor of Nike in skateboarding before finally coming around and returning to my childhood love of Dunks, the stories around each colorway, and all that. Then rappers started skating, and here we are today, where it's all just sort of normal, it seems.
I think about kids who started skating just five years ago and how they don't even know of a time when big companies didn't rule skateboarding. They don't know skateboarding without Red Bull or Monster being there, without huge shoe brands taking up most of the wall at their local shop, and without it being on TV and 40 million views YouTube rap videos. I think the skateboarding culture and industry have done a great job of passing along skateboarding's style, history, and culture to the new generations, though. New skateboarders that make it to the "real skater" phase seem to have a decent idea of what's up.
The amount of father and son skateboarders these days ensures the foundation of original skateboard culture will be there for a long time to come, no matter how nuts the mainstream part of it gets. I don't know if I can say the same for hip hop. I'm glad I got to grow up and grow old with both. With skateboarding and hip hop being "mature" now, I wonder if we'll see much in the way of huge changes like that in the next chapter of skateboarding. Either way, I think skateboarding is going to be just fine. Skateboarding sneakers, who knows on that one.
