I haven’t bought a new pair of sneakers in months. I’m doing OK, thanks for asking.
OPINION: There was a time when I’d buy multiple pairs of sneakers a month, but my spending has come to a grinding halt. I don’t even know me anymore.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
February 17, 2024.
February 17, 2024, was the last time I bought a pair of shoes. It took me a second to remember this because I disliked the shoes I bought on that date and forgot I owned them — probably because of that dislike. On that day, I got one of those coveted “Got ‘Em” notifications on Nike’s SNKRS app for a pair of Air Jordan 4 “Bred Reimagineds.” That notification used to bring me great joy; on that day, I remember feeling like I’d maybe just wasted $215.
After some reflection, I can confirm that I did, indeed, waste $215. I remember opening the shoe box, looking at the shoes and wishing I had passed on them until I’d seen them in person. I forgot I owned them until recently when I saw a person wearing them at a store and thinking, “I don’t like those shoes,” only to remember that I spent the equivalent of a kid’s week in summer camp — OK, maybe not a whole week, maybe like three days in camp — on some shoes I have, maybe, worn once, and am likely to never wear again.
What’s most interesting about that story isn’t that I wasted money or that $215 isn’t enough to put your kid in camp for a week, but that I can actually remember the last pair of shoes I purchased. For my life, that’s kind of uncanny. I used to buy multiple pairs of shoes a month with reckless abandon, so much so that I couldn’t remember what shoes I’d purchased even a week ago. I had a shoe budget, on purpose. I’d peruse sneaker blogs and shoe pages on Instagram in search of the latest drops from shoe brands I loved and sniff out collaborations that would result in cool, limited-edition kicks that fit my particular taste and aesthetic.
And then I just stopped.
It’s a weird feeling. I’m a shoe person. I like having lots of shoes that can go with nearly any outfit I could ever dream up. I like having shoes that have interesting stories and designs. I liked buying shoes. Now, though, I haven’t been interested enough in a pair of shoes to make a purchase in months. That’s not to say that I haven’t seen shoes that I like or might want, I still peruse sneaker sites and blogs and pages and the like. I just feel uninterested in all that I’ve seen. The closest I’ve come since February to wanting to buy a pair of shoes was a recent release, a collaboration between artists Nina Chanel Abney and an Air Jordan 3. I like the shoe a lot but I didn’t feel compelled to buy a pair. I watched so many sneaker unboxings of it trying to make myself buy them, but I was able to move on pretty quickly.
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This is a new space for me to be in. I’ve sold some shoes but mostly given away dozens of shoes to friends and friends with kids who might need a basically brand-new pair of whatever I had. I don’t know if my interest in shoes is waning. As I said, I still peruse my old sneaker haunts, but I don’t do it as much. I don’t spend hours watching unboxings for the newest kicks from my favorite sneaker content creators. I don’t see people rocking cool shoes and think that I need a pair. I take note and keep it moving. Funny enough, I don’t even miss buying shoes. That’s been the craziest part; I used to love the joy of buying them and now I’m like, “Great, I have more money!”
The hunt for a shoe that I loved at a price I was willing to pay used to be sport, now I’m a very happy spectator. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t feel like shoe companies are getting as creative as they used to. Maybe I’m bored and have gotten all I needed to get out of the sport of owning sneakers. Perhaps I’ve reached the natural end of my sneaker journey and am content with my collection (which is still pretty sizable and could use more downsizing) and am moving on to other endeavors.
Whatever the reason, I’m OK. I’ve experienced no hives, fevers or withdrawals. As it turns out, not buying shoes for probably the longest stretch in my history since I’ve had my own money has proven to be … just fine.
Now if I could just downsize this book collection …
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Dear Culture” on theGrio Black Podcast Network. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest) but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said “Unknown” (Blackest).
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