Kicks Tricks

Summer’s here, and that means the Strip is shopping for sneakers to keep its hooves from sizzlin’ on the sidewalk. That’s how your beefy narrator recently came upon a strange sight at the Art Official skate shop at 95th Street and Metcalf in Overland Park: more than a dozen guys throwing a party — for their shoes.

Some had wrapped their soles with electrical tape to keep them from getting scraped up. Others had added little pads to avoid smudging the logos on their insoles. The posse’s leader, 18-year-old Mark Green, arrived and then changed into his show gear: a pair of Nike Dunk SB De La Soles (named for the early ’90s hip-hop group) with a hologram on the back. Green said they’d never touched pavement. His investment was now valued at $250, more than double the sneaks’ original retail price.

Green’s crew of sneakerheads (tough guys who collect footwear like artwork) was holding its fourth “Shoe Summit,” which he’d organized through the online forum Niketalk.com. It included students from Bishop Miege and Lee’s Summit high schools, the University of Missouri-Kansas City and at least one over-30 white guy in a vintage basketball jersey.

“You always want to stay fresh, always want to have something everyone doesn’t have,” Green told the Strip. “I’ve always been one to dress well to take pride in how I look, so I have to have the best kicks on my feet. Nothing but Nike and Jordans.”

Green considered himself initiated into sneakerheadness back in his freshman year, when he stopped eating in the middle of the day so he could save his $20-a-week lunch money to buy shoes. He spent hours researching sneakers online, making friends with store employees for discounts and scouting racks at Nike outlet stores. Soon, he was like Carrie Bradshaw on ‘roids, camping outside stores to make sure he could buy the newest releases. He has more than 120 pairs.

This trend-spottin’ T-bone isn’t surprised. Since His Airness retired, the market for mint-condition pairs of Michael Jordan‘s signature footwear has been on fire. To capitalize, Nike has released a retro line and spun off an “SB” (skateboard) line. Kids now queue up for shoe releases like geeks at Star Wars movies. Many never wear their purchases but instead keep them in the box as though they’re Wookie action figures.

A pair of original Air Jordans from 1985 can go for $1,000-$1,500, Green says. He estimates that his most expensive pair, the retro “Laser Jordan IV,” is worth about $800.

He calls his size-12-1/2 feet “a blessing” because he can collect sizes 12 and 13, but he never knows when another size-12 dude will clear out the shelves before he gets a chance. (How many size-12 dudes can there be? Read on to find out!)

To avoid unpleasant shoe-store confrontations with guys his same size, Green decided to organize the city’s sneakerheads last November. Their first summit was at BBlaze Clothing, a boutique on 39th Street. There, men’s buyer Clint Miller, size 12, has been courting the shoe-freak contingent in an effort to compete against Art Official (which carries Nike SBs and Bathing Ape, a Japanese Nike spoof with a lightning bolt and a star instead of a swoosh) and Harold Pener’s (which carries Nike retros).

Miller’s personal collection once peaked at 300 pairs, but over the years, he sometimes had to auction off shoes to pay bills. He now has about 60 pairs and is “replenishing.”

“There’s an underlying need to be unique and expressive, and I think that’s a way to do it — with your shoes,” Miller says. “It’s about respectful one-upmanship and overall bragging rights that’s not for the general public.”

BBlaze plans to be the first metro shop to take advantage of the burgeoning customization trend. Both Nike and Reebok offer made-to-order shoes on their Web sites, but on June 9, the shop will put on Clothing as Canvas, featuring an array of designer pants, jackets and shoes modified by area artists. The show’s sneaker scribes include Sike Style and recent Kansas City Art Institute grad Hector Serna Jr. , who goes by the brush handle Blunt Naked.

Serna put Kansas City on the sneaker-decorating map about a year ago, when his pair of leather Converse high tops painted with musical imagery (a mix tape and an MC on his mic) and sporting speaker-wire laces made the top 100 best customizations in the Sneaker Freaker Book, the shoe industry’s underground almanac of cool. Two other Art Institute grads, Dennis Doty and Rigo Martinez, also beat hundreds of contributors in the international contest.

“You always want to have that one-of-a-kind pair,” says Serna (not a size 12). “The idea of building things is what I’m really interested in. To me, they’re small sculptures.”

Serna, who sometimes works in the shoe department at Urban Outfitters, tells this sartorial sirloin that he might turn his sneaker-sculptin’ into a side biz. In May, Green asked him to convert a pair of all-white Nike Delta Force low tops into a Neapolitanlike pink-brown-and-white summer shoe. Ooh la la!

“They turned out really good,” Green says. “I’m really happy with them.”

Meanwhile, Green’s entrepreneurial instincts aren’t standing still. He has created necklaces using small silver Nike Dunk trinkets — with exchangeable colored shoelaces — and has already unloaded 10 of them for $200 apiece on eBay. In July, he heads to Atlanta for a music production internship at So So Def. After that, he plans to enroll at Morehouse College, where he hopes to sell or trade his Dunk necklaces for more shoes. “College is a real broke time in life, so they tell me, so I gotta keep my sneaker game up,” he says.

Since January, he has unloaded a dozen pairs for more than $2,000 to help cover tuition. Now, that’s what the Strip calls thinkin’ on yer feet.