Alright. First off, I'not saying i hate these kicks. In fact, i really really like him. Enough so in fact, that i would have been willing to pay the astronomically high $215 price (which is definitely really steep for a pair of Nikes...) to cop these.
What i WILL hate on, however, is the super "exclusive" release that they treated these sneakers to. These Yeezy's (in case you don't know, they were designed by Kanye himself) have been building hype ever since he wore a black and white colorway at the Grammys LAST YEAR, and finally released in the first colorway (Zen Grey/Light Charcoal) on April 4th. The above pictured Black/Pink colorway released this past weekend. As expected, some people had been lined up for 4 to 5 days. Camping out is nothing new to the sneaker game, but usually, if one does so they are almost guaranteed to get a pair of what they have spent several nights in the street for. This time, as if the small amount of shops that received the Yeezys wasn't enough, each store only received ONE PAIR OF EACH SIZE (9.5 -12), definitely not even satisfying the demand of the few brave enough to camp out for them.
This is super fucked up. They build hype by putting up articles on webistes like Hypebeast and NiceKicks for almost a year, and then the release is so goddamn limited that almost noone can get them. This high demand and extremely low supply has prompted some shops to do some ridiculous things. Where I live, in DC, the Yeezys were available in two different shops, Cmonwealth and Major. Cmonwealth held a raffle (where one received one raffle ticket for every $25 spent in the store...if you win you are then granted the "privilege" of being able to purchase a pair of the coveted shoes). The other shop, did an even worse thing; they straight up auctioned them off. The highest bid was able to purchase the sneakers.
To me, this release shows how fuckin ridiculous this sneaker craze is all getting. I love footwear, ask anyone who knows me (or has seen my giant shoe rack),I'm a daily visitor of all the major sneaker blogs. I would personally never actually wait in line for several days for a pair of kicks, but at least the die-hard collectors that were willing to do that would be able to get what they were there for. It seems like even this no longer guaranteed. And honestly, Kanye shoulda put more pressure on Nike to get these more widely distributed, he's been shamelessly self promoting them and knew how popular they would be...and then he has the nerve to post this video on his own blog...
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