No, that gif is not what happens after you have a few uh, adult beverages inside the Nike Sneakeasy, but what you see behind the shoe is what happens when you step inside the Los Angeles-based space. It’s a history of Air, from the 1 to the VaporMax, but with a focus on what’s next. And what’s for Air next is light. Absurdly light.
For those who weren’t paying attention during the 1920s part of their history class in high school, The Nike Sneakeasy is a play off the speakeasies of the Prohibition Era, when it was illegal to produce and sell alcoholic beverages. In order to get inside some of these speakeasies, you literally had to knock on a metal door and tell the guard through a small window the password in order to get inside. Unlike a speakeasy, the Sneakeasy was focused more on showing you kicks that weren’t illegal, but rather ahead of its time.
Inside the Sneakeasy, once you passed through the video floor that made you feel like you were floating on air above the Los Angeles skyline, you were greeted by Ekins with iPad Pros who talked up the legacy of Air, complete with a collection of current and vintage Air Max kicks. They also informed us of the Air Max Vote Forward and the 12 RevolutionAirs participating in the program. Because LA is so much cooler than any other city in the world, two of the RevolutionAirs, Round 2’s Sean Wotherspoon and Brain Dead’s Kyle Ng, are locals and were in attendance to talk about their designs and inspirations. Also available if you wanted to get a heads up on everybody else were the Air Max Day iD Options for the Flyknit Air Max 1 and VaporMax that won’t be available for to the public for a few more days.
Every proper Nike Air Max shoe, starting with the Air Max 1, changed the sneaker landscape. Some ended up becoming classics that we wear to this day and some are better left to the ether, but they all had a profound effect on what everybody wears, from sneakerheads who camp out for rare limited editions Airs to your aunt who still walks around in her Air Max 2012 that she got at the Factory Store for half price. Nike capitalized on how much “Air” meant to them and created Air Max Day, but what once felt like a hokey excuse to get everybody buzzing on social media to rock Air Maxes has exploded into a legitimate month-long celebration with retros and special edition releases that honestly no other brand could pull off.
So about that look into the future. The Nike Air VaporMax is unlike any other Air Max shoe you’ve ever worn. We love to talk about how light Air Max kicks have become through the years, but you haven’t felt light until you’ve tried on the VaporMax. The best way to describe it for those who have yet to try a pair is to pull out a pair of the current Flyknit Air Max and imagine that without the midsole. Now all that’s in between you and the Air Max unit are is well, almost nothing. For the first time ever, you actually feel the Air underneath you. It’s a strange sensation that you always thought you felt when you put on a pair of Air Maxes, but this time it’s real. It actually takes a few minutes to get used to the feeling and probably a few hours to really grasp is going on with your feet, but the result is the same: the realization that this is the leap that we’ve been looking for in Air Max. If the 90s Air Maxes were Standard Definition CRT TVs and the 2000s were HD, the VaporMax is the razor-thin Ultra 4K HDR set that you stare at inside Costcos. You’ll ogle at how pretty it is while at the same time probably be worried as hell just how stable and durable the thing is (one worry about the VaporMax is that we won’t know how they’ll work in the real world in everyday wear), but you’ll enjoy every second while it’s new and hot.
And if you missed it on our IG Story, here’s the replay. And because I posted this, I also learned a valuable lesson today: YouTube doesn’t like stills. You’ll see…
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