I first got into sneakers towards the end of middle school, when my friend Lucas and I would spend hours looking through Eastbay magazine (a kind of SkyMall for high school athletes) comparing the different shoes, picking out our favorites on each page. As I got older and able to do things like decide what clothes I wore, my interest in sneakers increased: I followed, and still do, the industry on the internet and Instagram, I pay attention to the relationships between athletes and the brands they endorse and generally try to rationalize the money and time I devote to footwear. I know when shoes release, where they will be available, and what clothes I would wear with them, should I be fortunate enough to snag a pair. I’m what’s generally called a Sneakerhead. It’s a labor of love.
Middlebury, it must be said, is not exactly an epicenter of this particular niche of popular culture. As a lifelong New Yorker, I’m used to not only having access to whatever the hell I want, but also a community of people who also want that thing and understand its place within a larger cultural context. In the remove of Middlebury, it can be hard to sustain an interest that falls outside the general flow of college life, be it political, culinary, or sartorial in nature. Below is a four-pack of reasons it sucks being a sneakerhead at Middlebury.
1. I’ll give you a hint: look outside. We have what, 10 weeks a year of nice weather, sprinkled amidst dreary fall rain, never-ending snow and gushing spring mud. Freakin mud has its own season up here. All things considered, Vermont is not particularly friendly to what’s on your feet. I’m not the kind of sneaker enthusiast who treats his collection like a curator at the Met treats old coins — I buy shoes to wear them. But I don’t want them to look like Sam Gamgee’s feet after one trip to the dining hall.
2. Nowhere to cop new shoes. Sneakers are distributed, much like everything else, according to demand. That means a store like Olympia Sports (located right by Hannaford’s), is going to stock only the most standard shoes, editions that Nike or Adidas can crank out a billion pairs of, ship to the Middleburys of the world, and know that they won’t have to restock the retailer for a nice long time. That’s not to say that the shoes sneakerheads covet are necessarily limited, but rather that the tastes of these enthusiasts trend towards models and editions other than the cheaper-by-the-dozen basics. As a result, one is forced to buy online. That means missing out on kicks that would be easy to get in-store (due to the massive internet reliance of sneakerheads living in places like Middlebury) or the deepest circle of sneaker hell: waiting for shipping to break in that fresh pair.
3. I’m broke. Ok that’s not specific to Middlebury, more of a general symptom of being a college student. Redeeming my High Life cans once a month gets me close to buying . . . a rack of High Life, but definitely not a new pair of Roshe Runs. With all the “Last bar night of the semester!”s, which are always followed quickly by “First bar night of the semester!”s, college “sponsored” events which one has to pay for, and all my massages courtesy of Benjamin Miller ’14.5, it’s always a matter of scraping things together. You say trivial, money-sucking addiction, I say participation in a vibrant, growing sub-culture. Whatever. But hey, if you’re feeling charitable, my graduation IS coming up, and my wishlist ain’t short. Let’s just move on.
4. People here don’t care about sneakers at all. Like any cultural phenomenon, the vitality of sneaker culture is ultimately grounded in the individuals that make up its community. It may seem weird to a lot of people, which is fine (trust me, I think a lot of stuff y’all are into is pretty weird), but amongst interested parties, shoes can be a pretty cool source of unity, debate, passion and even history. Walking into a sneaker store in SoHo or the Upper West Side is like walking into a miniature convention and promises to bring you into contact with a group of people who share this interest with you and have a vocabulary to discuss it. Middlebury has no end of intelligent, engaging people, but in a place its size, there isn’t likely to be a large constituency representing every last nook and cranny of popular culture. I’m sure other people have found the same to be true.
5. Finally, the disdain I receive from other students here regarding my footwear. Although most people can’t tell an Air Max 90 from a 95, which is cool, they do notice that I’ve got a pretty various rotation of sneakers. I can’t tell you how many times people have asked me, “Do you wear a different pair of shoes everyday?” or “What’s the point of having the same shoe in two different colors?” Obviously I don’t have a different pair of shoes for every day of the semester. It’s not so much the comments that bother me, but the condescension in peoples’ tones.
Of course, these experiences are truly inconsequential when compared to the homophobic, racist, and otherwise discriminatory aggressions many students at Middlebury face on a daily basis. This is a totally different kind of discussion. I simply mean to say that people here have a funny way of negating or belittling forms of cultural expression that are foreign to them. I certainly understand why some people would consider it shallow or materialistic to invest (in many senses of the word) so much in sneakers. Perhaps that understanding makes me self-conscious and prone to imagining derision from my peers. But ultimately, any aesthetic interest, be it shoes, photography or $100 Lulu Lemon yoga pants, is necessarily tied to a material object. In that sense, materialism is a disease all of us here at Middlebury share. If we can acknowledge that, while also working to increase our mindfulness and responsibility as consumers, we will find ourselves more capable of appreciating the myriad interests represented at this school.
