Historicist: Life in Wartime
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
Photo by Amanda Factor/Torontoist.
After seeing a post on Ryan Feeley's blog, Torontoist dropped by Livestock sneaker boutique today to see with our own eyes a big, but not insane, number of people camping out for Kanye West's latest sneaker, which goes on sale at the store Saturday at 11 a.m. Nike's Air Yeezys, which retail for $260 at Livestock, are only being sold in major cities.
Not to be confused with the shoes Kanye designed for Louis Vuitton, Air Yeezys look like something out of Back to the Future II, plus they totally glow in the dark. Stedman Lee drove six hours from Cleveland and has been waiting in the line-up since Tuesday night. For him, it's all about getting his hands on the limited-edition kicks (word on the Internet is only nine thousand pairs are being sold worldwide). "It's all about being exclusive, being original." To kill time, he's been exploring Toronto while a pal guards his spot. "It's a beautiful city. More people should experience it."
The last time Livestock saw this kind of action was a month ago, when the same shoe was released in a different colour. Next month they will release the third and final colour. Manager Carlos Ortiz expects the pink and black Yeezys will sell out in five minutes or less, based on what he witnessed a month ago. "If people could buy two pairs, they would, but we only allow one pair per customer. Some people want them so they can resell them." A single pair of size sevens on eBay is already poised to fetch $1,442 Canadian.
Cagney Durance drove up from Buffalo with his buddy Shawn Lee and told Torontoist we should come back on Saturday morning if we really wanted to see some action. "Last month a guy from Rochester was offering people at the front of the line seven hundred dollars for their spot," he recalls. "A guy got out of a Range Rover, on crutches, and was offering one thousand dollars for a pair of size tens." Holy Yeezy.
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people are losing their jobs left, right and center, and these dummies are standing in line for $300 sneakers?
This is where fashion loses me. What is so great about the shoes? Is someone from Bata standing in line for them too?
For 300$, you could buy a lot of people a lot of shoes.
Call me crazy, EsplanadeGuy, but waiting a few days outside to resell $260 shoes for four to five times that much sounds like a not entirely unclever business plan.
Whether buying for yourself, or buying to resell, this only goes to prove P.T Barnum was correct when he said "There's a sucker born every minute."
Ah! That explains that. I'd see people lining up there frequently and always wondered what the hell they were lining up for. SHOES?! Fucking shoes?! That's crazy.
It's amazing how bananas people will go for sneakers. The documentary Just For Kicks does a really good job of documenting just how obsessed people can get.