The Sneaker Pimps Tour kicked off the U.S. leg of its ’05 tour in LA on July, 8th at the Rec Center Studio in Echo Park (very cool new venue). My greatest party foul of the night was not wearing sneaks to the event. I showed up in gold Havaianas flip-flops! Hey, it’s summer and I live in So Cal, seems appropriate right? Well, not quite, judging by the looks that I got. My partner in crime (the photog) was wearing flip-flops as well and also received similar stares of admonishment. We made our way to the bar that prominently displayed Skyy vodka, but were informed that we needed a special wristband for that bar and were instead re-directed to “the other bar” that had Smirnoff and less fancy mixers. Despite feeling rather common amongst the elite (as everyone BUT us seemed to have the coveted wristband), we managed to wrangle a couple drinks and scuttled off to view the rows upon rows of sneakers.
By the time we got there at 8:45 the place was packed. The hipster crowd snaked around the room examining each sneaker carefully while rocking out to old-school hip-hop. Some of the sneaks on display were special edition, hard to find, collector-type shoes and others were totally customized sneaks from an international array of artists. The artist sneaks, of course, were the most interesting. The overall layout and display (chain link and brick) drew the crowd in and gave a street-wise feel to the show, but a key problem was that about 9/10 of the artists’ sneaks had no IDs on them, veiling the identity of the artists who had painstakingly crafted these special sneakers. Some highlights of the customized sneaks were the Miami Vice, Chinese Dragon, Nintendo, and old-school tattoo art sneakers. Another highlight was a gorgeous display of sneakers set atop a black lowrider Impala with a gigantic painting by Mr. Cartoon set as its backdrop. There was a separate room of sneaks housing big name artists like Shepard Fairey, HAZE, D-Face, Buff Monster and others of a similar caliber. That room was probably the most intriguing of the show, if only because of the sheer talent housed in there. Actually, between that and looking down at the floor to see what the rest of the crowd was wearing… the best pair of sneaks in the crowd was a pair of pink, blue and yellow pastel custom Nikes on a guy. Love men who aren’t afraid to wear pink!
Outside the Rec Center (“no alcohol or ins/outs”) there was skateboarding by the legendary Stevie Williams and a bunch of others that were just trying to keep up. The show was an overall success and aside from the cool sneakers, the people watching may have even been the greatest highlight.
