Real sneakerheads get why Donald Trump's gold shoes are a failure . . . and ugly, too

Former president, now presidential candidate and the world’s most famous defendant Donald Trump dropped the Never Surrender high-tops at Sneaker Con in Philadelphia last Saturday. This marks the end of Sneaker Con, for me at least, but we’ll get to that.

Various outlets have reported that Trump may have released the shoes to pay for his massive legal fees. If this is true, then he’s going to have to crank out a lot more, because only 1,000 pairs of Never Surrenders were produced with a hefty price tag of $399. The shoes sold out, bringing in $399,000 not counting production cost and taxes. The fraud judgment against him in New York is $350 million.

The Never Surrender is the ugliest shoe I ever saw in my life – and trust me, I’ve crossed paths with tens of thousands of sneakers. Never Surrenders are gold high-tops with a round toe box. The midsole is white and there’s an American flag stretched across the back. They look too flat to hoop in, too ridiculous to style, too stupid to wear with jeans and too gaudy to take seriously.

I’d rather die, than be caught wearing a pair of Never Surrenders and apparently so would Trump. I haven’t even seen any video of Trump wearing his own hideous shoes, which is the No. 1 rule in sneaker culture and Business 101 in general, when you are the face of a product. You need to be seen enjoying that product. Imagine Elon proudly not driving his Tesla. You’ll almost exclusively see Michael Jordan in Jordans, unless he’s wearing dress shoes (which also may be Jordans) and there are dozens of stories on the internet told by celebrities who foolishly pulled up to Jordan events or functions not wearing Jordans. I’ll sum them all up for you in one line; you find some Jordans to put on or leave. But I wouldn’t expect Trump or any one on his team to understand the ways in which one should properly promote a sneaker, because they are outsiders.

I was born into Nike culture.

Back in 1985, the water pressure in the bathroom sink was strong enough to break toothbrushes, and maybe bones. It was four of us in a one bedroom, but we housed up to 10 people at times who all shared that sink, which always told me when my dad was home. You see my dad was the only one that turned the faucet up to the highest level when washing his face, when shining his gold tooth and definitely when cleaning his Nike Air force 1’s. Dad scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed at the sole with a soft sponge, using the force of the water to power-wash the dirt away. I would later teach him the benefits of using a toothbrush, and then a magic eraser years later. 

I wouldn’t call my dad a sneakerhead, but his experience, as one of those fly corner dudes from the '80s is very important in understanding the foundation of the culture Trump and his minions are trying to imitate.

Because it was the fly corner dudes who always kept fresh sneakers – hence my dad at the sink, cleaning his shoes and sometimes polishing when he couldn’t afford a new pair.  And it was the fly corner dudes who had Air Force 1’s in multiple colors, back when Nike started doing color of the month. And it was the fly corner dudes who mixed and matched those shoes with athletic and or formal attire in a way that was never seen before. Standing out wasn’t their only motivation for fashion innovation – these guys wore what they had. For example, my dad once rocked a black Adidas track jacket with a pair of black tuxedo pants and slip-on loafers. He accessorized with dark shades and zipped the jacket halfway so that his thin gold necklace could poke out. The whole neighborhood went crazy over this look. What the neighborhood didn’t know was that my dad only had enough money to buy the track jacket – the matching track pants and shell-toe Adidas shoes were still on layaway. You work with what you have.

Mismatched shoes sometimes originated from losing a shoe, just as multicolored shoe strings often came from not having a set of shoestrings for all of your shoes – necessity.  Making lemons out of lemonade was a way of life, and thankfully we made it look so cool. Us kids grew up following those fly corner innovators and developed our own styles.

By the time I reached high school, athletes like Penny Hardaway, Scottie Pippen, Tim Duncan and many other NBA All Stars earned big endorsement deals with sneaker companies. Sneaker culture exploded but it was still beautifully niche, as all of the brands realized the power of urban markets. They made colorways and marketed directly to us. Corny posers and pretenders didn’t care about sneakers the way we did; that feeling of opening up a box of new Jordan’s was something that we owned. This was the '90s before Sneaker Con, the resale market or sleeping outside of a store to get a shoe was in existence. There were some very popular people in sneaker culture, but they were all underground. You knew guys like DJ Clark Kent and Fat Joe had the biggest Nike collections in the world. You knew that eBay and InStyleShoes had all of the heat. Remember there was no social media, so word of mouth was everything. YouTube and the internet introduced us to sites like Nice Kicks, other blogs  and shoe legends like Mayor and DontChargeAbdul. The true collectors collected, we had fun, we shared and traded, we enjoyed the many styles that helped to define us and who we were. The streets continued to make sneakers cool, so cool that people from far removed places wanted to imitate.

But it's not just sneaker culture being hijacked. The fashion industry in general draws inspiration from people and cultures who they never dream about giving credit to. Balenciaga is a perfect example. They have designer trash bags that retail at $1,850 for you to carry your clothes in. Everybody from poverty knows that when you can't afford a suitcase you put your clothes in a trash bag. I imagine one of their designers saw this, thought the person struggling looked cool, which they probably did and then did their take. The brand also sells a 10X sneaker for $1,300 that makes a person's shoes look 10 times too big for their feet. Again, people from poverty know that we pass shoes down to our little brothers and sisters even when they are too big. Balenciaga saw this and duplicated that look. Trump probably doesn't know why his own shoes are gold – which is likely inspired by kids who used to spray paint their worn kicks bronze, gold or metallic in an effort to revamp them. All of the major brands from Gucci to Louis Vuitton have their own version of street wear, where they witness the flyest people in urban America, and then cut and paste their style while attaching their mega names, too.

Gucci stole one of Dapper Dan's famous designs back in 2017, which is the opposite of the origins of his designs. Black people have been historically discriminated against in high-end stores. This frustrated Dapper Dan back in the 1980s, and forced him to do something about it. In response to this ongoing discrimination, Dapper Dan created his own high-end boutique in Harlem where he took prints from brands like Fendi and Gucci and made them into stylish clothes for Black people in the neighborhood. Celebrities like Mike Tyson and LL Cool J were regulars at his shop. Dapper Dan became so popular and started getting so much traction that Fendi’s lawyers had his store raided, which eventually put him out of business. Decades after Dan closed his doors, Gucci was caught using one of his designs. They found an image of an old Louis Vuitton puff coat he designed back in the day and recreated it, without giving him any credit.  When the brand was called out, they made amends by building Dap – Gucci's Dapper Dan atelier – in Harlem. Dap now does work with Gucci and the Gap. It would be great if Trump was called out the same way, as he is the Gucci in this situation.

The fact the sneaker culture has become so mainstream, that someone as corporate and square as Trump has the confidence to throw his hat in the ring is leading me to believe that sneaker culture is done. Which brings me to Sneaker Con, and the people who put on that event in combination with the fans, collectors and buyers. There's no way in the world Donald Trump should have been able to make an appearance and be gifted a platform by a culture that he doesn't contribute to. His speech, lack of knowledge on sneakers, and hideous shoes should have caused mass protest but instead, a collection of squares lined up to take pictures with Trump, holding up the flat, poorly designed uninteresting Surrenders.

Which means that the people of Sneaker Con are not a part of my tribe. I have attended Sneaker Con in the past as it was a great place to collect, talk about shoes, buy and trade but I will never attend again, and encourage my collecting community to stay away from those people, as they will do anything for clout.

However, I would never let a square, scamming politician keep me away from a culture that was elevated and made special by the people from my neighborhood, people like my dad all over the country who couldn't always afford luxury, so they created it.