- 26
- 10
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2001
I sit here with pneumonia... my first time being sick in years... wondering if/why anyone would even be interested in reading this. (Most won't, and should probably just go on to another topic right now, for fear of being bored to tears.)
But, since I can't go to work, I decided to surf around in my old shoe hobby. I saw a post by someone in here that asked whether NikeTalk is a bad influece, and talking about how he tapered off on buying Air Jordans, but now he feels influenced to re-stimulate his Air Jordan addiction. I replied to that thread with a resounding "RUN LIKE HELL" (having kicked my addiction about 6-7 years ago, I think??).
Are Air Jordans addictive? Yes.
How badly? Depends on who you are. In my case, badly.
What was my life for so many years? Come home from work. Jump on a few of the forums like Sneaker-Nation and others. Make about 100 posts a day or some crazy number like that. Get in shoe arguments with teenagers (one of the biggest wastes of time on Earth). Get frustrated by fools that endorse counterfeit shoes. Run my own little Air Jordan information/picture website (which wasn't hugely popular or well designed, but if you keyed in "Air Jordan" into the search engines back in the day, you got MY site as the top hit, not even Nike!!). Looking forward to the next Air Jordan release. Plan ahead for how I will get them, and how many pairs to buy. When a new Air Jordan colorway was released, I was there when the store opened, and had the pictures/descriptions on my website by the end of the day. Yes, my life revolved around Air Jordans. (Yet, somehow, stupidly in retrospect, when I was asked to be one of the founding members of NikeTalk before it was even launched, I turned it down... go figure that one out.)
Air Jordans were my heroin, my porn, my alcohol, my food, my gambling, my shopping. Pick your addiction of choice, that's what Air Jordans were to me. (Air Jordans and skydiving... those were my drugs... but skydiving is another topic.)
I knew every Air Jordan in my collection by heart. I had the pairs I'd wear lined up in 2 closets in perfect order from release date and colorway. I basically had to BUILD these two closets specially for my shoes, with perfect shelving height just for these shoes. The same went for the hundreds of pairs I kept new in the box. I kept them obsessively and perfectly stacked in my basement in order by release date and colorway. You could put a blindfold on me, and ask me for a certain year/color of Air Jordan, and I knew EXACTLY which slot it occupied in my closets (for the ones I wore) or which box it would be in (for my deadstock pairs). I had every model, every colorway, from the Air Jordan 2 through the current day. And, I had a bunch of the Air Jordan 1s (but not every colorway, because there were far too many ultra-rare ones that I couldn't get my hands on). I knew exactly how many pairs I had at any moment (now I couldn't even guess within an error range of 25 pairs). I could tell you exactly how the logos were oriented, how to tell fake from real, and most of the time could tell you most of the codes on the shoe tags... all by heart. Was I the foremost "expert" on Air Jordans in those days? Hmmm.
What purpose does any of this knowledge serve? Well, none really, beyond feeding an addiction. Oh, I suppose there was a sense of community about it too... but I got along with so few in the community. I had such idealism. If you copied and re-posted someone's shoe picture, I basically equated you to a murderer for violating copyrights, etc. The letter of the law was to be followed to the most strict sense, or you were an immoral pig in my book. (I've since joined reality, thank you.)
I was the original coiner of the term "variant" (as applied to Air Jordans), simply as a temporary term until I figured out what this new form of counterfeiting really was. In retrospect, I should have kept my damned mouth shut until I figured out what was going on, because for a long time, using my term "variant" was a way for the distributors to conceal the fact that it was still actually counterfeit (even though the factory decided to start a side-business of building various non-authentic colorways of Air Jordans out of spare parts, some legit, some not). Is "variant" still used today in that capacity? I don't know.
Learning, after a decade and a half with this obsession, that I should probably quit (which I considered unthinkable), I started to analyze my options. I had never before even contemplated selling a single pair of my collection. As far as I was concerned, I was going to my grave with a pair of deadstock 1985/86 Air Jordan 1 metallics on my feet. This hobby had become an obsession. And, it wasn't fun any more. Nike was watering down the Air Jordan line by coming out with far too many pairs per year, with some of the dumbest colorways and designs... ugh. But, by far, the biggest "final straw" that really killed it for me was the "regional release" concept. This pissed me off to no end. Now, I couldn't even head to the local store to get a pair, but I had to cross the damned Mississippi river to get a pair?? I had to make arrangements with fellow collectors all over the country (or WORLD in the case of the metal-case Air Jordan 1 silver Japan version, individually tagged, only 2001 pairs made). Ridiculous. "Limited" was one thing. But, "you need to make arrangements with someone in JAPAN to get you a pair" -- uugh, insane. Yeah, I did it. I got my pairs by having contacts across the globe for all of these regional releases. But, this was getting to be an impossible hobby to maintain. How far was I willing to bend my life for this hobby-turned-obsession? I can't help but think that if Nike didn't flip out and go crazy with their limited Air Jordan releases, maybe I'd still be in it today. I could even live with a rare regional release if it didn't happen more than once in 5 years or so. But, this stuff was getting more and more frequent, and they pushed me over my breaking point. And, surprisingly, it really didn't take much time for me to decide. I thought about it for about 2 weeks. Then, I decided I was going to quit.
I ended up making arrangements with Steve from Instyleshoes. He was the one that offered me the best price... (and a friend of mine decided to quit the hobby at the same time I did, so we made it a 2-collection sale, ironically both of us wearing the same size). I since learned that Steve was pretty unorganized and had some weaknesses. As it turned out, there was a discrepancy between his bookkeeping and mine, and he and I fell out because I was shorted by around $10K or something like that (I can't remember). But, I can say that I was eventually paid in full after a letter from my attorney. And, in retrospect, I don't believe Steve honestly intended to short me, and I learned that we BOTH made some bookkeeping errors. I think Steve is an honest guy who just lost track of things, and should have tended to it sooner than he did, but he was launching his magazine at the time. Yeah, I saw something here that said he wanted to "buy NikeTalk for the wonderful value of 0 dollars and 0 cents"... seems pretty crazy and insulting. But, again, I don't think he's malicious or as bad as he seems... I think he's just maybe a little disconnected from reality sometimes. And, like me, he's a capitalist. But, unlike me, sometimes he forgets to put himself in other people's shoes (hahaha, bad pun). In the end, I don't think he's dishonest at all... he'd never touch counterfeits with a 10-foot pole as far as I can tell... he stands behind everything he sells, etc. And, even though I had to get my lawyer to write a letter for the final 10K (or so) of our deal, it was a small percentage of the total amount (which was well over 6 figures), and... you know... frankly I don't think I'd have done the deal for the price he did it for. In retrospect, I think he got the short end of the stick in our deal. I didn't know it at the time, mind you. But, now, as a company owner myself, yeah, I can tell you there's no damned way that I'd take on hundreds and hundreds of pairs of Air Jordans at the premium prices that he paid for them... for the low margin that he got for them. After all of his advertising and costs of running his business, I doubt he even made 10K in net profit on my collection. So, even though he slow-payed me on the final 10K for my collection, and it made me furious at the time, man, he deserved more money than he got. I don't care whether you love the guy or hate the guy... but I have nothing bad to say about his integrity... just about the fact that he's a bit disorganized and out-of-touch.
Hell, nowadays, I'm sitting here with about 100K in overdue invoices from clients slow-paying me... ridiculous people fighting with me about a $15 fee on a deal 10,000x that size... ugh. All I can say is, Steve, man, if you're out there, now I see what you were going through. I don't know what you did wrong to the NikeTalk folks (maybe they have valid complaints about you)... but as for our deal of the sale of my collection of Air Jordans, for whatever it's worth today, I recognize that you got the short end of the stick on that one (even though it's the exact amount we agreed upon). In retrospect, I got the money, you got the heartache.
So, what happened after I sold my collection? Well, I immediately quit buying new Air Jordans. Mind you, I kept maybe around 75-100 pairs of the lower value ones. I still have around 5 pairs deadstock. Nothing terribly valuable in comparison to the ones I sold. I sold everything old, and everything that would bring in more than $200 per pair (with only a couple of exceptions). But, I just love the AJ10 black/purple Sacramento edition, so I kept a deadstock pair of those, plus a pair to wear. And, I love the AJ8s, so I kept one or two deadstock (originals) of those. I got rid of all of my AJ11s, all of my deadstocks and all of my pairs that I wore, because despite their popularity, I was never a big fan of that design. I got rid of all of my AJ1s except I ended up keeping a deadstock patent leather black/gold (remakes from about 7 years ago) for some reason I don't understand (I don't even like them that much). Now I'm not even sure where they are. In my basement somewhere, I'm sure. I should probably sell them. I also love the Air Jordan 13s, so I kept one or two deadstocks of those, but I can't tell you what colorway(s) I kept deadstock without digging them out to look at them. This is the change from my addiction days to today. I don't even know what I have now!! Can you believe it? I went from having every pair perfectly arranged, memorized to the smallest detail... to now, where I don't even know what I have, or even where to find them in my house. They're here somewhere. I don't own any Air Jordan 2s, 3s, 4s, or 5s. I can tell you that much. But, you know, I wouldn't be willing to bet on that... because it's possible that I still have a pair or two laying around that I forgot about.
After a couple of years of not buying any new Air Jordans, I went back to buying a new pair now and then, if I see a pair I like. I don't know how many pairs I've bought since I "quit" (well, quit the obsession level anyway... not that I quit altogether)... maybe 25 pairs since I "quit"? Maybe 50 pairs since I "quit"? I really don't count, nor do I keep tabs on what's coming out. And, there have been a few releases that I missed and regret missing. But, unlike the past, when I never even missed a release... now, not only do I miss releases, but I don't lose sleep over it. If I had missed a release back in my addiction days (not that ever did miss one), I would have stayed up combing through friends and the internet auctions to FedEx me a couple pairs at ANY price. I probably couldn't sleep until I had a couple pairs on the way. I can honestly tell you, that despite the fact that I still wear Air Jordans every day, and despite that I still own... I don't know... around 125 pairs??... I can say that I am honstly NO LONGER ADDICTED to collecting Air Jordans. I've kicked the habit. I don't spend beyond my means. I don't lose sleep over shoes. If/when I do buy a pair of Air Jordans, it doesn't phase me. I don't rush to take pictures and study every line.
When I quit several years back, I did so mainly because I wanted mainly to be able to retire comfortably as a millionaire, etc. If I kept on the track I was on, that was never going to happen. I also decided that I should "kick the habit" (get rid of an obsessive addiction), but that was secondary to my long-term goals. Since selling my collection, I used that money as downpayment/equity on a couple of rental houses. I actually lost money in that endeavor (ahh, stupid real estate collapse). But, I used the rest of it to start my own consulting company (which is where I am today). I started my company in my own basement as a one-man show. But, years later, now my company has a nice office suite in a first-class business complex. I've got a staff, and we have some very nice large corporate clients. Owning a business can be a roller-coaster, of course. I wish I could say that I have been profitable every year. But, the recession took its toll, and there was one year that I heavily invested into expanding my company, and it back-fired on me and my company took losses. Ahh, when to grow, and when NOT to grow... that's the question. But, we've been profitable every other year, and 2011 looks like it's going to shatter past records for us in all areas (all POSITIVE areas), so that's a good thing. Anyway, I don't think I could be doing what I'm doing today if I still had my shoe addiction. First of all, buying the shoes took up a damned huge portion of my income, and I don't think I could have started my business if I hadn't sold my collection and stopped spending so much money on shoes. Secondly, it's hard to focus on developing a business when I used to spend every spare minute of my time either skydiving or on Air Jordan shoe forums.
I also got married since I quit the Air Jordan addiction. My wonderful wife Judy is now my only addiciton (smile). We have a fantastic marriage, and we love traveling the world together. (We highly recommend Australia... all we can say is WOW... Sydney... The Rocks... the Opera House... scuba diving every day for a week on the Great Barrier Reef and the Coral Sea... the Gold Coast... Steve Irwin's zoo... WOW, you've never seen anything like Australia.)
Anyway, my fellow Air Jordan addicts... enjoy your obsession... but don't let it dominate your life. If you have to ask yourself if you're going too far, take it from me, yes, you are. If you are asking the question, it's already too late, you ARE an addict.
But, since I can't go to work, I decided to surf around in my old shoe hobby. I saw a post by someone in here that asked whether NikeTalk is a bad influece, and talking about how he tapered off on buying Air Jordans, but now he feels influenced to re-stimulate his Air Jordan addiction. I replied to that thread with a resounding "RUN LIKE HELL" (having kicked my addiction about 6-7 years ago, I think??).
Are Air Jordans addictive? Yes.
How badly? Depends on who you are. In my case, badly.
What was my life for so many years? Come home from work. Jump on a few of the forums like Sneaker-Nation and others. Make about 100 posts a day or some crazy number like that. Get in shoe arguments with teenagers (one of the biggest wastes of time on Earth). Get frustrated by fools that endorse counterfeit shoes. Run my own little Air Jordan information/picture website (which wasn't hugely popular or well designed, but if you keyed in "Air Jordan" into the search engines back in the day, you got MY site as the top hit, not even Nike!!). Looking forward to the next Air Jordan release. Plan ahead for how I will get them, and how many pairs to buy. When a new Air Jordan colorway was released, I was there when the store opened, and had the pictures/descriptions on my website by the end of the day. Yes, my life revolved around Air Jordans. (Yet, somehow, stupidly in retrospect, when I was asked to be one of the founding members of NikeTalk before it was even launched, I turned it down... go figure that one out.)
Air Jordans were my heroin, my porn, my alcohol, my food, my gambling, my shopping. Pick your addiction of choice, that's what Air Jordans were to me. (Air Jordans and skydiving... those were my drugs... but skydiving is another topic.)
I knew every Air Jordan in my collection by heart. I had the pairs I'd wear lined up in 2 closets in perfect order from release date and colorway. I basically had to BUILD these two closets specially for my shoes, with perfect shelving height just for these shoes. The same went for the hundreds of pairs I kept new in the box. I kept them obsessively and perfectly stacked in my basement in order by release date and colorway. You could put a blindfold on me, and ask me for a certain year/color of Air Jordan, and I knew EXACTLY which slot it occupied in my closets (for the ones I wore) or which box it would be in (for my deadstock pairs). I had every model, every colorway, from the Air Jordan 2 through the current day. And, I had a bunch of the Air Jordan 1s (but not every colorway, because there were far too many ultra-rare ones that I couldn't get my hands on). I knew exactly how many pairs I had at any moment (now I couldn't even guess within an error range of 25 pairs). I could tell you exactly how the logos were oriented, how to tell fake from real, and most of the time could tell you most of the codes on the shoe tags... all by heart. Was I the foremost "expert" on Air Jordans in those days? Hmmm.
What purpose does any of this knowledge serve? Well, none really, beyond feeding an addiction. Oh, I suppose there was a sense of community about it too... but I got along with so few in the community. I had such idealism. If you copied and re-posted someone's shoe picture, I basically equated you to a murderer for violating copyrights, etc. The letter of the law was to be followed to the most strict sense, or you were an immoral pig in my book. (I've since joined reality, thank you.)
I was the original coiner of the term "variant" (as applied to Air Jordans), simply as a temporary term until I figured out what this new form of counterfeiting really was. In retrospect, I should have kept my damned mouth shut until I figured out what was going on, because for a long time, using my term "variant" was a way for the distributors to conceal the fact that it was still actually counterfeit (even though the factory decided to start a side-business of building various non-authentic colorways of Air Jordans out of spare parts, some legit, some not). Is "variant" still used today in that capacity? I don't know.
Learning, after a decade and a half with this obsession, that I should probably quit (which I considered unthinkable), I started to analyze my options. I had never before even contemplated selling a single pair of my collection. As far as I was concerned, I was going to my grave with a pair of deadstock 1985/86 Air Jordan 1 metallics on my feet. This hobby had become an obsession. And, it wasn't fun any more. Nike was watering down the Air Jordan line by coming out with far too many pairs per year, with some of the dumbest colorways and designs... ugh. But, by far, the biggest "final straw" that really killed it for me was the "regional release" concept. This pissed me off to no end. Now, I couldn't even head to the local store to get a pair, but I had to cross the damned Mississippi river to get a pair?? I had to make arrangements with fellow collectors all over the country (or WORLD in the case of the metal-case Air Jordan 1 silver Japan version, individually tagged, only 2001 pairs made). Ridiculous. "Limited" was one thing. But, "you need to make arrangements with someone in JAPAN to get you a pair" -- uugh, insane. Yeah, I did it. I got my pairs by having contacts across the globe for all of these regional releases. But, this was getting to be an impossible hobby to maintain. How far was I willing to bend my life for this hobby-turned-obsession? I can't help but think that if Nike didn't flip out and go crazy with their limited Air Jordan releases, maybe I'd still be in it today. I could even live with a rare regional release if it didn't happen more than once in 5 years or so. But, this stuff was getting more and more frequent, and they pushed me over my breaking point. And, surprisingly, it really didn't take much time for me to decide. I thought about it for about 2 weeks. Then, I decided I was going to quit.
I ended up making arrangements with Steve from Instyleshoes. He was the one that offered me the best price... (and a friend of mine decided to quit the hobby at the same time I did, so we made it a 2-collection sale, ironically both of us wearing the same size). I since learned that Steve was pretty unorganized and had some weaknesses. As it turned out, there was a discrepancy between his bookkeeping and mine, and he and I fell out because I was shorted by around $10K or something like that (I can't remember). But, I can say that I was eventually paid in full after a letter from my attorney. And, in retrospect, I don't believe Steve honestly intended to short me, and I learned that we BOTH made some bookkeeping errors. I think Steve is an honest guy who just lost track of things, and should have tended to it sooner than he did, but he was launching his magazine at the time. Yeah, I saw something here that said he wanted to "buy NikeTalk for the wonderful value of 0 dollars and 0 cents"... seems pretty crazy and insulting. But, again, I don't think he's malicious or as bad as he seems... I think he's just maybe a little disconnected from reality sometimes. And, like me, he's a capitalist. But, unlike me, sometimes he forgets to put himself in other people's shoes (hahaha, bad pun). In the end, I don't think he's dishonest at all... he'd never touch counterfeits with a 10-foot pole as far as I can tell... he stands behind everything he sells, etc. And, even though I had to get my lawyer to write a letter for the final 10K (or so) of our deal, it was a small percentage of the total amount (which was well over 6 figures), and... you know... frankly I don't think I'd have done the deal for the price he did it for. In retrospect, I think he got the short end of the stick in our deal. I didn't know it at the time, mind you. But, now, as a company owner myself, yeah, I can tell you there's no damned way that I'd take on hundreds and hundreds of pairs of Air Jordans at the premium prices that he paid for them... for the low margin that he got for them. After all of his advertising and costs of running his business, I doubt he even made 10K in net profit on my collection. So, even though he slow-payed me on the final 10K for my collection, and it made me furious at the time, man, he deserved more money than he got. I don't care whether you love the guy or hate the guy... but I have nothing bad to say about his integrity... just about the fact that he's a bit disorganized and out-of-touch.
Hell, nowadays, I'm sitting here with about 100K in overdue invoices from clients slow-paying me... ridiculous people fighting with me about a $15 fee on a deal 10,000x that size... ugh. All I can say is, Steve, man, if you're out there, now I see what you were going through. I don't know what you did wrong to the NikeTalk folks (maybe they have valid complaints about you)... but as for our deal of the sale of my collection of Air Jordans, for whatever it's worth today, I recognize that you got the short end of the stick on that one (even though it's the exact amount we agreed upon). In retrospect, I got the money, you got the heartache.
So, what happened after I sold my collection? Well, I immediately quit buying new Air Jordans. Mind you, I kept maybe around 75-100 pairs of the lower value ones. I still have around 5 pairs deadstock. Nothing terribly valuable in comparison to the ones I sold. I sold everything old, and everything that would bring in more than $200 per pair (with only a couple of exceptions). But, I just love the AJ10 black/purple Sacramento edition, so I kept a deadstock pair of those, plus a pair to wear. And, I love the AJ8s, so I kept one or two deadstock (originals) of those. I got rid of all of my AJ11s, all of my deadstocks and all of my pairs that I wore, because despite their popularity, I was never a big fan of that design. I got rid of all of my AJ1s except I ended up keeping a deadstock patent leather black/gold (remakes from about 7 years ago) for some reason I don't understand (I don't even like them that much). Now I'm not even sure where they are. In my basement somewhere, I'm sure. I should probably sell them. I also love the Air Jordan 13s, so I kept one or two deadstocks of those, but I can't tell you what colorway(s) I kept deadstock without digging them out to look at them. This is the change from my addiction days to today. I don't even know what I have now!! Can you believe it? I went from having every pair perfectly arranged, memorized to the smallest detail... to now, where I don't even know what I have, or even where to find them in my house. They're here somewhere. I don't own any Air Jordan 2s, 3s, 4s, or 5s. I can tell you that much. But, you know, I wouldn't be willing to bet on that... because it's possible that I still have a pair or two laying around that I forgot about.
After a couple of years of not buying any new Air Jordans, I went back to buying a new pair now and then, if I see a pair I like. I don't know how many pairs I've bought since I "quit" (well, quit the obsession level anyway... not that I quit altogether)... maybe 25 pairs since I "quit"? Maybe 50 pairs since I "quit"? I really don't count, nor do I keep tabs on what's coming out. And, there have been a few releases that I missed and regret missing. But, unlike the past, when I never even missed a release... now, not only do I miss releases, but I don't lose sleep over it. If I had missed a release back in my addiction days (not that ever did miss one), I would have stayed up combing through friends and the internet auctions to FedEx me a couple pairs at ANY price. I probably couldn't sleep until I had a couple pairs on the way. I can honestly tell you, that despite the fact that I still wear Air Jordans every day, and despite that I still own... I don't know... around 125 pairs??... I can say that I am honstly NO LONGER ADDICTED to collecting Air Jordans. I've kicked the habit. I don't spend beyond my means. I don't lose sleep over shoes. If/when I do buy a pair of Air Jordans, it doesn't phase me. I don't rush to take pictures and study every line.
When I quit several years back, I did so mainly because I wanted mainly to be able to retire comfortably as a millionaire, etc. If I kept on the track I was on, that was never going to happen. I also decided that I should "kick the habit" (get rid of an obsessive addiction), but that was secondary to my long-term goals. Since selling my collection, I used that money as downpayment/equity on a couple of rental houses. I actually lost money in that endeavor (ahh, stupid real estate collapse). But, I used the rest of it to start my own consulting company (which is where I am today). I started my company in my own basement as a one-man show. But, years later, now my company has a nice office suite in a first-class business complex. I've got a staff, and we have some very nice large corporate clients. Owning a business can be a roller-coaster, of course. I wish I could say that I have been profitable every year. But, the recession took its toll, and there was one year that I heavily invested into expanding my company, and it back-fired on me and my company took losses. Ahh, when to grow, and when NOT to grow... that's the question. But, we've been profitable every other year, and 2011 looks like it's going to shatter past records for us in all areas (all POSITIVE areas), so that's a good thing. Anyway, I don't think I could be doing what I'm doing today if I still had my shoe addiction. First of all, buying the shoes took up a damned huge portion of my income, and I don't think I could have started my business if I hadn't sold my collection and stopped spending so much money on shoes. Secondly, it's hard to focus on developing a business when I used to spend every spare minute of my time either skydiving or on Air Jordan shoe forums.
I also got married since I quit the Air Jordan addiction. My wonderful wife Judy is now my only addiciton (smile). We have a fantastic marriage, and we love traveling the world together. (We highly recommend Australia... all we can say is WOW... Sydney... The Rocks... the Opera House... scuba diving every day for a week on the Great Barrier Reef and the Coral Sea... the Gold Coast... Steve Irwin's zoo... WOW, you've never seen anything like Australia.)
Anyway, my fellow Air Jordan addicts... enjoy your obsession... but don't let it dominate your life. If you have to ask yourself if you're going too far, take it from me, yes, you are. If you are asking the question, it's already too late, you ARE an addict.
