1/13/2024 0 Comments Nike sb grateful deadA decade on, that comeback has finally arrived: present-day sneaker kingmaker Travis Scott ushered it in with the “Cactus Jack” Dunk in February, followed by that wild “Chunky Dunky” phenomenon, which felt like a proper return to SB’s unhinged glory days. Given the sheer number of nostalgia-addled millennials who became card-carrying sneakerheads off the back of one model, however, it’s long felt inevitable that the SB Dunk would someday rise again. Nike SB gear, once the hardest Swoosh merch to find, suddenly started popping up in big box stores and discount chains. The silhouette lost its luster, replaced by a renewed interest in throwback Jordans and the surge of excitement around Kanye’s original Nike-era Yeezys. That’s when the Lafayette store got heavy with lines and when James started to get really strict about who can be in the shop and who can’t.”Īnd then, as the aughts came to a close, the SB Dunk all but dropped off the face of the earth. “One hundred percent, the Nike Dunk changed the shop,” Jamie Story, a former graphic designer for the brand, told Complex recently. When the shoes dropped in September 2002, it turned out to be a star-making moment for both sides of the collab: the SB Dunk Low was officially one of the hottest silhouettes in sneakers, and Supreme became Supreme. Nike SB let Supreme have a crack at its new flagship sneaker, and the downtown legends flipped it in reference to the Air Jordan 3, with its iconic cement print. Instead, it tanked, and it looked like yet another Nike-led skateboarding venture was dead on arrival. Back at the turn of the millennium, Nike SB-then a fledgling sideshow at the sportswear goliath-tried to turn the Nike Dunk into a skate shoe, hoping its echoes of the Air Jordan 1 ( popular with skaters like Tony Hawk) would make it a hit. Nobody would ever accuse sneakerheads of being open-minded and non-judgmental, but collectors of a certain age will see the parallels between Deadheads and Dunk lovers all the same. It starts with loving the music, of course, but then you find the community at Grateful Dead shows-18,000 other kind, compassionate, open-minded, non-judgmental people-and you immediately feel at home.” “For most Deadheads, being a Deadhead is something they’d point to as one of their big identifiers, as who they are. “It’s an enveloping culture,” he says of his brethren, some of whom he’s been seeing again and again at hundreds of shows for almost 40 years now. “My parents never had any problem with that,” he says, “because they knew I was going to be in a community that was absolutely no threat-a community that would take care of me if I ran into trouble or needed to borrow $50 bucks to get home.” Just over a decade later, Lemieux made the ultimate commitment to the band: signing on as the Dead’s full-time archivist, a role he’s now held for over 20 years.Įmployment aside, Lemieux’s story isn’t all that rare. By 16, he was driving and flying thousands of miles across the continent to go to Dead shows alone. “I put the record on the turntable at my mom’s house, and not even 30 seconds in, I knew: ‘This music is for me.’” By 14, he was deep into the tape-trading scene, sending cassettes of live sets back and forth around the globe with other Deadheads. “It was Workingman’s Dead,” he remembers vividly now, at 49. Growing up in Ottawa in the ‘80s, David Lemieux bought his first Grateful Dead record at 13. In working with the Dead, SB is tapping into a history of fervent, culture-building fandom deeper even than its own no-longer-cult following. Enveloped in panels of shaggy fur and doused in screeching neons, they’re a nod to both the Dead’s legendary Dancing Bear mascots, as well as Nike’s own 2006 “Three Bears” pack, perhaps the most divisive and instantly recognizable Dunks from SB’s mid-aughts heyday. After scoring a surprise smash in May with Ben & Jerry’s hallucinatory “Chunky Dunky” collab, the Swoosh’s skateboarding division is readying its kookiest late-period drop yet: a trio of SB Dunk Lows produced in collaboration with The Grateful Dead. On Saturday, the Nike SB renaissance takes another great leap forward.
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