the district

Nike, no newcomer to getting attention for their corporate responsibility (and sometimes awing lack of), has announced its first foray into “recycled” footwear with the Nike Trash Talk.  Now while the shoe isn’t technically recycled, its made from manufacturing waste, I believe this to be more of a semantics issue than anything else.  With manufacturers in all sectors now looking for innovative ways to utilize what was previously waste, the world could really do with a catchy word to cover these products.  Maybe reclaimed? I don’t care, I’m here to talk about shoes. The Trash Talk, which was released last month in limited quantities in NY and NoLa will be released on April 22 at select House of Hoops stores in the Phoenix Suns color schemes.  While in this reviewers opinion, the shoes are fugly with a capital F, thats really my opinion on most basketball shoes, so decide for yourself.  Discussing the new kicks Nike footwear designer Kasey Jarvis said: “ We were really looking for a ‘here and now’ solution to footwear waste, and creating a performance product using waste materials felt like a very innovative solution. Using Nike’s Considered design ethos we were able to create a shoe that stands up to the stringent on-court performance requirements but is also more environmentally friendly.” For $100 you can go get your own. Read more on the Nike website.

Apparently it’s footwear week here at the District, and so today I bring you Simple. I once had a pair of bright red Simples that I bought on a beach in the middle-of-nowhere Australia for $10. They may have been my favorite shoes ever, but thats not what I am going to write about today. Instead, it’s ecoSneakers. And while trying to squeeze the word ‘eco’ into every environmentally friendly product offering is more than a little cliche, thats about the only thing I don’t like about this website. In list format here is what I do like:

1. Ingredients. They tell you how they make the stuff and whats in it.

2. Make your own shoe kit. Kind of reminds me of the anarchist kids I used to live with in Boston that ate out of dumpsters just to prove that they could, but the shoes are still pretty damn cool. One might even say, they still get mad DIY street-cred.

3. Slip-ons that aren’t Vans:

4. The use of the word “vulcanized”.

5. Stylish Vegan footwear options for my friend Ben so he can throw out his white hemp booties.

Thinks I don’t like:

1. No new Red Shoes.

As a guy who wore Chuck Taylors (aka Converse All-stars) when they were cool, then when they were not cool, and then still when they were cool again, lately I kind of feel violated by the hipsters’ collective adoption of the footwear as their own. Granted sometime in my mid-twenties I finally got sick of having cold and wet feet and gave them up, the sight of a guy in skin-tight black jeans and a pair of Chuck high-tops still kind of makes me cringe on multiple levels. Well, at least one good thing has come as a result of the re-re-resurgence of their popularity; the introduction of Fair-Trade Chuck Taylor knock-offs. Now, not to sound too much like a curmudgeony old coot, but I still look back fondly at the days when Chuck Taylors cost $20 and were made in America. Well, guess what, times have changed: Made in Indonesia, $47, owned by Nike. And silly me, I thought shipping jobs overseas was about saving consumers money.

(AP pictured on left, No Sweat pictured on right)
Anyway, the Autonomie Project has recently unveiled their own version of the sneaker made fairly and retailing for $54 (lows) to $56 (highs). Now granted I am pretty hopped-up on Dayquil right now, AP’s shoes, although available in a wider range of colors do look suspiciously similar to No Sweat’s footwear offerings only with a significantly larger price tag. As far as who has better Fair Trade street-cred, you can read up on that yourself. Rock on hipsters.