Why One Sneakerhead Cut Back to a Solitary Pair of Adidas Sneakers

When you’re “a sneaker guy” there are a certain set of questions you will inevitably be asked over and over again. How many pairs do you own? Can you get me a pair of *fill in impossible to get sneaker name here*? What are your top five favorite sneakers? If you could only wear one pair of sneakers for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Over time, you come up with ready answers to all of these. In order: “Between 500 and 1,000,” “No,” and “I have no idea.” The last one, though, is the toughest. Over the years it’s changed, from the Air Jordan III to the Air Jordan 1 to the Stan Smith. But if you asked me right now, I’d probably say the adidas Campus.

Because, these days, that answer seems more correct than all the rest. The Air Jordan III was a young man’s answer, more about the impact of its design and style than its long-term wearability. The Stan Smith is too white (not you Stan, the shoe), and the Air Jordan 1 is a bit too attention-grabbing to pair with anything outside of the basics. (I guess you could wear an all-black pair, but...why?) The Campus on the other hand, is the Goldilocks principle in sneaker form: for me, for now, it’s just right.

That’s true for plenty of reasons—some obvious, some leaning toward the metaphysical. Sure, the Campus is right in that wearability sweet spot—not as slim as the Gazelle, not as chunky as the Superstar—and has been produced in any number of colors and materials over the years. It even has impeccable on-court pedigree, as its Greenstar predecessor was worn by Bill Russell and his ‘69 Celtics teammates. Later, it enjoyed a revival on the feet of the Beastie Boys, who did for the Campus what Def Jam labelmates Run DMC did for the Superstar.

About that: want to feel old? It’s been 27 years since two-thirds of the Beasties wore Campuses on the cover of 1992’s Check Your Head. At that time it had only been 23 years since Russell and the Celtics wore Greenstars en route to toppling Wilt Chamberlain and his Los Angeles Lakers, their 11th title in 13 seasons. Two generations of nostalgia are baked into the shoe—and when I pull a pair on, I feel some of that. Or, even stranger, a sort of nostalgia for nostalgia itself.

Think about sneakers in 1992. The timeline was still straight: retro editions didn’t exist. If you wanted an older model, you had to dig. Deadstock literally meant dead stock: obsolete shoes that were all but unsellable gathering dust in some sporting goods store back room or basement. Two years later, when Nike re-issued the first three Air Jordans, nobody cared. Why would anyone want old sneakers? Most of them wound up on clearance tables, marked down to $25 or less.

So when the Beastie Boys wore sneakers like the adidas Campus and the Puma Suede/Clyde in the early ‘90s, it actually meant something. These weren’t shoes sent by a publicist, or a collaboration worked up between the brand and the group. If you wanted those specific shoes, you literally had to get your hands dirty—or at least someone did. By the mid ‘90s, the brands caught up. That first Jordan retro release didn’t make noise, but as simpler sneakers came back into style, the classics got a second wind.

I got my professional start in the sneaker world right when all of this was happening. What was once linear became a criss-crossing series of lines that saw the newest models jostling for shelf space (and consumer dollars) with proven hits from the past, as well as little-remembered models revived for inscrutable reasons. A trip to the local sneaker spot became a little like listening to Paul’s Boutique: something new deeply cut through with references from the past. Instead of a simple hierarchy, where you lusted after whatever the most expensive new models were (there was no need to refer to an Air Jordan by number when it was simply theAir Jordan), now shelves were dense with sneakers from every era.

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