The musings of a madman...

       I spend a lot of my (semi-) adulthood running away from my childhood… … oh, and I will NOT be addressing my absence for the last month. IYKYK.      When I dropped by my barber two weeks ago, the first thing he asked was "damn, how many pairs of shoes do you HAVE!?"  as I was sitting down to receive my fade. I sat and calmly explained that my sneaker collection -- and yes, I wear my shit -- is a direct response to how we came up. We didn't have a lot, and 100% literally never got new release shoes, always the clearance ones or the ones that found their way to Marshalls, until I was a senior in High School and could buy my own shit.  Even then, I got a side eye for buying them. Sure, we had Nikes but not the ones everyone else had. More frustrating is that this happened in the golden era of the early 90s, so my interest in sneakers at that time was mostly as an outsider who couldn't afford to come inside.      That w...

My name is a Phillip, and I am a sneaker head…                 I did not come by this as honestly as many who I have observed have.  In fact, I may have created it for a WILDLY different set of reasons.  When my twin and I were 11, we left my pops and became a single parent household.  Even before this January day, we could basically be assured that at any given time there would be three pairs of shoes in our lives: 1 – “school” shoes:  this would be the newest and cleanest pair, re-upped only at the beginning of the school year and Christmas. 2 – “play” shoes: the most recently demoted shoes from “school shoes” status, provided there had not been a major growth spurt to bring on a change. 3 – “church” shoes: replaced ONLY at significant growth spurts and/or Easter.  Otherwise self-explanatory.               ...