Converse seems to be reaching out to us downtown hipsters. First Bronques shot their ad campaign and now they have pasted posters all over downtown featuring people like Kid Sister, MGMT, Santogold, and my VA brothers N.E.R.D. Santogold, N.E.R.D. and that dude from the Stroke’s even teamed up to write a song for Converse called “My Drive Thru”. On top of that they asked hipster promoter extraordinaire Andy Shaw to get them a list of people to send free shoes. As the amateur sneaker head that I am I could have not been more excited to have made that list. Not only am I getting free high tops, but my existence has been validated because for once I am getting free swag that is not pornography DVDs. (Not that I mind the porn… Thx Eon!)

So yes downtown, we are being marketed to, and I love marketing. And I love free stuff. And since the whole point of sending out free sneakers is that they can get them in the hands of “early adapters” and “connectors” and other exciting marketing terms like that. So I figured I would do them one better than just wearing the shoes in public, I would blog about them, cause that will make them happy and maybe it will make them so happy that they will want to send me some of the Kurt Cobain high top Chucks that I would have murdered someone for in 1993. And if not it will still give me a chance to blog about shoes, which is something I would do a lot more if I could afford it.

Anyway, I have never owned a pair or Converse shoes that were not Chuck Taylors. But from 1992-1999 I am pretty sure I wore nothing else. I had all sorts of crazy colors but I pretty much only wore black high tops. I wrote A and V on the tips of the shoes representing Alexandria, VA my home town. After a few months, everyone I knew was rocking the AV. I once saw a girl I had never seen before and she was rocking the AV’s, but they were facing her, instead of facing away. I mentioned this to her and she got in my face about it saying I did not know what I was talking about, which was an amazing thing as the originator of said brief trend.

I have always been a brand loyalist. I have pretty much only worn a few types of shoes my whole life. I started out in Roos, moved on to Nikes and Jordans when I was a kid. Once I grew out of child sizes my parents wouldn’t buy me Jordan’s anymore. From 1984-1994 I played soccer so I wore a lot of Adidas, mostly Sambas. My first Chucks were all blue and I wore pretty much nothing else until after high school. For a while I flirted with skate shoes… Airwalks, Vans, and Etnies even SOAPs, but I never had more than a couple pairs and I was still rocking Chucks at the same time. I have even considered tattooing the Converse All Star logo to my ankle so that I could wear low top Chucks without socks and they would look like highs. That is not even a joke (although the idea of me rocking lows, or not wearing socks is).

In 2003 Nike bought Converse and I had a pretty strong punk rock ethos at that time and I was pissed. I thought they were going to ruin the shoe. Fortunately, Nike tapped into what Converse already knew, and made even more crazy designs that were even more collectable. At this same time I started managing a dance band and got further and further away from my punk rock ideals and returned to my love of Nikes. After I bought my first pair of Dunks I was hooked on the shoes that I grew up on. You are hard pressed these days to find me out of Nike High Tops, be they Jordan’s, Dunks or my favorite: Nike Vandals.

This may be why my first impressions of the free shoes I got were a little mixed. Converse sent me a pair of re-released Pro Team Weapons that they put out for their 100th anniversary. When I pulled them out of the gold box, I dug them instantly. I put them on and they fit right away and were super comfortable. I really liked the look of them from the sides. The only problem I have is that when I look straight down at them, I am so used to Nike’s that they look a bit weird to me. They look almost too much like basket ball shoes. And yes, I understand the irony in that, since all the shoes I wear are basketball shoes. Still, I have worn them three days in a row now and as long as they stay as white as they are, I will keep rocking them. (They did get covered in fake blood the first day I wore them, but that came off pretty easily.) That is my second, and only other problem with them… I fear white shoes. Scuffed white shoes make me really sad, so I try to avoid them at all costs. But these were free, and I have gotten some compliments, and they are super comfortable and I think I could pull off wearing them to a wedding. They will remain in my shoe rotation for sure.

Lastly, I wanted to know a little about the shoes I got so I sent a picture of them over to James Martin at The Converse Blog. He didn’t know a lot about them but here is what he did say:

I don’t know a great deal about them, other than they are re-issued shoes from the 80’s. I am pretty sure they were released after the Weapons, but I am not 100% on that. Your pair seems to be a deluxe edition with better leathers and other materials used compared the general release of the Pro Teams in that colorway. Also the box looks to be pretty cool too, I haven’t seen a gold box with the Converse Century design details.

After talking to James I looked at the Converse website and the shoes are available on there and don’t seem to be any sort of limited edition or anything… so I think he is wrong about that, but they are still very fresh. The box he mentions is similar to the Nike ID boxes that slide out and are a really nice touch. The gold converse box is probably my favorite box since the second generation Ice Creams I have that came in a box that looked like a carton of ice cream. They may still do that, but the new Ice Creams are so damned ugly that you won’t catch me in a pair.

Okay. That was an insanely long post. I did not mean to rant like this, but I don’t often have the chance to talk shoes… or marketing, so I have to get my hits in where I can. So yeah, if YOU have some free shit you want to send me, please do, and maybe I will write an epic blog about your swag too. <3 Swag.

Okay, okay; Check out the shoes for yourself and then download the Pharell/Santogold/Julian Casablancas converse track below:

N.E.R.D., Santogold and Julian Casablancas – My Drive Thru:
N.E.R.D, Santogold and Julian Casablanas – My Drive Thru

I feel like I have been running around a lot lately without a camera so I figure we can do like a little run through of the last few days before I get to the photos from Trash.

Thursday night I went to a bunch of places… Upstairs, Unstoppable Perfect and I was on my way to Jake Destructions new party when I ran into an extremely drunk DJ Krames who convinced me and Niko that the place to be was Porch for the Name Ribbon party. When we got there it was pretty late and the previously packed crowd was beginning to thin. I was about to leave for Jake’s party, but due to the drunkness of several people I ended up staying there until like 430 at which point Krames, Rok One, two girls and I decided to drive to the White Castle in Bushwick. The plan was actually just to drive everyone home, but when I found out Rok lived next to the White Castle I made everyone go with me. I was hungry, no one else was. I was joking about how we should get thirty burgers which Krames kept calling the “Dirty Thirty”. Everyone seemed to think I was joking when I pulled in to the White Castle drive thru. I looked at the menu and low and behold 30 burgers was an actual menu item. I ordered 30 burgers and a small drink. After waiting for about 30 min in line while we jammed out to the Bangers “I Hear Dead People” mix tape we were handed an entire fucking SUITCASE full of burgers. I did not think such a thing existed. Let me stop right here to point out that Krames is not the smallest of men, and he was squeezed in the back seat of my two door hatchback with two girls and a shit load of clothes that Niko gave me for Kristine. He could not even move enough to get any money out of his pocket to help pay for the burgers. So when I handed him a case of burgers it was probably one of the funniest things I have ever witnessed to watch him struggle to hand out the burgers to all of us. (This also may have had something to do with the fact it was 5 am and I had only slept 4 hours the night before.) I have photos of this, but they were on my film camera so they are not developed yet. You will see them eventually. As a group we crushed the burgers. I think I had 7 myself. The only two that were not eaten were used as props in a photo shoot that involved one of the girls laying on my car topless with burgers on her nipples, a suit case full of meat on top of the car and Krames jumping out of the car burger in hand. It is less likely that you will see that photo because I told the girl I would only post it if it was amazing… and I have my doubts. When it was all said and done I was full of burgers, Krames an I had decided we were best friends, and Rok and I seriously bonded over the Fat Boys (which strangely enough had nothing to do with the 28 burgers we consumed.).

Okay.. so lets skip to Saturday, last night… I saw Olde English’s comedy show. I am an old school fan and it was nice to see them in person. Plus my “fun dad” Pete was there as was this dude Kumail who is probably in the top 3 funniest Kumil’s on the internet. The show was great and then I got a call to go to this party in Greenpoint… you know… I should go to sleep instead of ranting.

There are these photos from Friday night. I was helping Kill Shop Kill shoot their look book. Brad Walsh was shooting portraits and I was shooting action shots. So yeah, there are a lot of photos here of people wearing KSK shirts. Yeah. Not safe for work because of Stormy’s pornographic battle with Moz’s birthday cake… seriously.

I quit my day job in September and I have been half heartedly looking for a job while making less than a living doing photography. In that time I have stopped riding cabs, started eating a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and I completely stopped buying shoes. According to my blog, the last time I bought shoes was Aug 10th, which is just criminal. But I did buy two pairs on that day, including my all time favorite Nike Book Dunks. Anyway, I thought I was going to have some money after this Miami trip, but a broken lens and some unexpected expenses later I am completely fucking broke.  I am back on the job hunt. But, before I left I had my eyes set on the Air Jordan 1 rerelease quick strikes. They are the Opening Day pack and they are modeled after Jordan’s old minor league baseball team the Birmingham Barons. They feature the White Socks pin stripes with baseball stitching and crossed baseball bats that read BB 3 51, which after some investigation stand for Birmingham Barons and the 3 home runs and 51 RBI’s he hit.

Anyway, I had to have these shoes because I used to love Jordans as a kid and I have not rocked a pair in 15 years. They are mostly black which means they will match pretty much everything I wear and will be a good every day shoe and will let me wear my Nike Book’s a lot less which will hopefully keep them in better shape. I have absolutely no money now (at least until I get paid for Miami) and a lot of broken equipment. I will be eating a lot of PBJ over the next few weeks and looking for a day job, but at least I will have fresh kicks for my interview.

So evidently there was some sort of shindiggery going on at High Voltage tonight that I was not aware of. It came in the form of bands and massive amounts of people and annoying Camel cigarette reps. I am sure I could find out all sorts of information from the flyer that was pasted all over my myspace page, unfortunately because those flyers no longer carry my logo, I have started deleting them like I do all the other dozens of party flyers I get posted on my page every day. It’s not that I don’t want to know about your parties… cause I do… I just don’t want huge images posted all over my page. Anyway, back to this annoying Camel rep. This girl comes up to me and asks me who I shoot for. I tell her and then she proceeds to give me permission to shoot her event. I told her I know I can shoot it and then she tells me not to take photos of any Camel stuff. Which seems very backwards as you would think the whole point of huge Camel signs in a club would be that so people see it, but most of all it just annoyed the fuck out of me. If you don’t want me to shoot your signs, get them the fuck out of my shot, and get them the fuck out of a party that I have shot pretty much every day since its existence.

Anyway, when I got to the party I got the DBB shirts that Aaron from Kill Shop Kill made me. They are pretty great except for the fact that he gave me weird sizes and they didn’t really fit any of the people I wanted to shoot. I shot Brynn Foley and Terrence in them but they had to rip them to make them work. Which, is perfectly fine by me… I just wish there were a few more girls smalls. Hopefully those shirts will be available to the public soon. I will keep you updated. Leave a note in the comments section if you like them. So after I shot my shirts, I spent part of the evening doing KSK plug shots to make Aaron happy so will keep giving me free shirts. It was so crowded inside I had a hard time really shooting and I was pretty stressed out for some reason so I dipped out to San Loco with some girls who are supposedly my friends but won’t let me take their picture yet appear half naked on another local photoblog. Hmm… And then we talked politics until people started screaming. Fun. Then I went to Lit and hung out with Contessa and Nicole and Cameron and discussed lesbian on gay strap on sex and watched boys climb scaffolding and steal bus signs.

I feel like I am called a lot of people out today. Hmm… Pictures do their thing over here.

Hey guys! How about an advertisement!! I don’t know anything at all about fashion, I pretty much just wear jeans and a t-shirt every day. I mean, I dig on some street wear brands and my Nike high tops, but other than that I am pretty out of it. Fashion week was fun though right? Anyway, what I do know about is that I get a lot of people coming to this website and clicking on links. And that makes people want me to talk about things… Such as Zac Posten’s fashion week show. Evidently I am going to get some free stuff that until 30 minutes ago I didn’t think I needed if I write the following on my blog:

“If you haven’t heard of Zac Posen…wait till you see his fall 2008 line. Hes a NYC based designer who has a whole new take on the fashion industry, his new designs are creative and innovative with a mostly black and white theme.”

“For the full 2008 Fall Fashion Week Line click here“

Now, I am not sure what that means, but I am positive it is true. The guy who is giving me stuff would not lie to me. I mean who can put a price on things you don’t really want right? I could put a price on ad space on this site though… if any one is interested.

Anyway, I at least think these clothes are pretty fun. I would probably hit on a girl who was wearing this… or at least take her picture…

Last night I made it to Rebel for the first time ever. There are many times that I have wanted to go there but it is just so far away from me. And since it took me so long to get there I was late for the fashion show. The show was 5 minutes from starting when I walked in the door, I had to push my way to the front and I got right up to the run way some how… 10 years of going to shows finally paid off… anyway, the whole time there was this really tall guy in front of me, but I figured I could shoot around him. I was wrong. If I shot to the left of him, the girls were too far away, and if I shot to the right of him, they were too close up. If I bumped my flash up to get the girls when they were far away I was blowing them out when they were close. I needed to be getting the shot right were this guys head was. I ended up taking the worst photos ever. If I had hired myself to shoot the event, I would have fired myself. I was pretty embarrassed. As a result there are only a handful of shots from the actual show, but since 50 photographers shot it, I guess it is not a big deal. I decided that since I blew the show, I would shoot the hell out of the after party, and that is what I did… at least until I had to leave to go to Midway (which took me over an hour by the way). Anyway, there are some cool photos here.

It is Fashion Week in NYC so clearly Six Six Sick had to throw down. People were very decked out tonight. Bronques hosted and Aggy and Jackson DJ’d. I had not slept in 35 hours when I got to the party so I was a little out of it. I met Slut Machine last night and I rambled at her about nothing for like 20 minutes before realizing I was just talking because I was too tired to stop. I think spent another 10 minutes apologizing for how I was talking non stop. It probably did not make the best first impression.  I stayed there far too long. I had meant to go to bed at 8AM that morning and I did not leave happy endings till 3AM, so I think I stayed up 19 hours longer than I should have. Woops. Anyway, I think at some point in the evening I fixed my flash, so the first few images are a bit off, but then I think the rest are okay. I am worried that it is going to keep fucking up in the future. Oh well.

Pictures go over here.Â

Two days ago I got an email from Wikipedia saying they did not have a photo of model Agyness Deyn that they could use for her Wikipedia entry. They saw that some of my Flickr photos have Creative Commons licenses but for Non-Commercial use. The can’t use those Creative Commons licenses so they asked for permission to use the photo or change the license. Since I am pretty much in love with Wikipedia I of course gave them permission and I am pretty excited to say I now have my third reference on the Wiki (reference one and two). Anyway, coincidentally last night she was at Happy Endings DJing with Jackson so I got to talk to her and tell her about her Wiki page. I think she was pretty amused. You can see my new photos of her in the above post, and the Wiki photo below.

About two months ago I suddenly looked up and realized that 10 people in the bar I was standing in were wearing some form of prohibition era hat. Fedoras and pork pies went out of style with Kennedy, why the hell are they making a comeback now. Now I have no real place to be talking about fashion since I have worn a t shirt and jeans every day since I was born, but this hat thing is a bit odd. I didn’t really think that much of it until I went to Urban Outfitters the other day and the store completely freaked me out. In this one store they seem to have every item on earth that will make you hip. For me being cool should be about finding weird things from all over and appropriating them into your style. You find a thrift shirt and some vintage belt and find a style that makes you unique. There are a lot of great things that I would want in Urban Outfitters but to see all that manufactured cool in one place made me feel a bit sick. They sell Holga cameras there for $70 dollars. They sell limited edition Nike Dunks. They sell books by Chuck: both Klosterman and Palahniuk. And of course they sell fedoras. They had about 10 different kinds so you can pretend you are unique and interesting. The chances are in a bar with 10 people wearing cheap hipster fedoras that maybe only one person will be wearing the exact one you bought. Every time I have brought this up with people wearing these hats they tell me they have had it for years… This may be true, but I didn’t notice. What I want to know is on exactly what day did this become part of the hipster uniform and why wasn’t I informed. But the main reason this all became a post is that on Halloween I asked my friend where she got her fedora; I was wondering if she was shopping at Urban Outfitters. Her reply? “I got it at Warped Tour for $10.” Remind me to shoot myself. The Fedora is officially the new trucker hat.

Anyway, I looked through my posted pictures from just September and October and I came up with 40 images of people wearing old timey hats. Several of the pictures have multiple people wearing the hats. These pictures come from just four parties. M, High Voltage, Trash and Six Six Sick. High Voltage was the most Hat Filled party, with Trash being the least filled. I only shot a few weeks of Six Six Sick so I didn’t get many shots, but I think they averaged 3 hats per party. Keep in mind that I did not intentionally shoot people with these hats, I was just looking through old galleries. Anyway, check out all 40 pictures of silly hats here.