High (Top) Style

‘‘Street apparel”—marketese for the gear young black males wear to the mall (i.e., ball cap, hoodie, designer jeans, immaculate sneakers)—always attracted a certain white consumer. But in the same way that it’s OK for straight guys to dress “metrosexual,” spending thousands on a massive sneaker collection is now considered a mainstream lifestyle choice. If the patron saint of Manolos was Carrie from Sex and the City, the sneakerhead’s icon is Turtle from Entourage, a Nike addict with a taste for hip-hop and flamboyant, matchy-matchy ensembles.

Not long ago, if a suburban ’head was into “Uptowns” (street slang for Nike’s Air Force 1—the best-selling shoe in the world, which, for years, sold without the benefit of a single commercial), his only option was to drive into the ’hood, to Friedman’s in North Minneapolis (400 W. Broadway Ave., Mpls., 612-522-2362). Open since 1898, Friedman’s interior is exactly like the Jewish-owned, NYC sneaker shops featured in the underground sneaker documentary Just for Kicks—its narrow aisles are clogged with overstuffed racks displaying the store’s entire inventory, everything from Air Jordan Retro 3s with graffiti accents to Florsheim wingtips. Friedman’s transitioned from a “working man’s” store to a shop geared to sportswear in the 1980s, when David Friedman became the first local retailer to sell the Nike Cortez. David’s twenty-six-year-old son, Marc, still targets the family’s core urban market, but he also courts the modern sneakerhead: an obsessive-compulsive collector who gets the inside dope from niketalk.com, hypebeast.com, and Complex Magazine, and who’s willing to get up early and stand in line for shoes he will wear once, if at all.

“People come here to buy shoes they won’t see on somebody else’s feet,” Marc says. “That’s pretty much the name of the game.” But as the urban trend blows up, with Foot Locker, Champs, and other chains trying to cash in, the game has become more challenging. Friedman’s isn’t a “tier zero” Nike retailer, like Undefeated in LA or Alife Rivington Club in New York, so, for instance, it didn’t get the ultrahyped Nike Pigeon Dunks release. But because of Friedman’s long-standing relationship with Nike, sneakerheads will find other releases they won’t find anywhere else locally. “My only criteria is that I won’t wear a shoe my dad wears,” Marc says.

In order to manipulate supply and demand, Nike constantly shifts “packs” of limited-edition shoes around to certain deserving stores, but Nike isn’t blindly loyal to longtime retailers such as Friedman’s—in fact, in order to accommodate a shopper who is more comfortable on France Avenue than Broadway Avenue, Nike has granted specialty accounts to new sneaker boutiques such as Status in Calhoun Square (3001 Hennepin Ave., Mpls., 612-824-3100) and Familia in St. Paul (647 Snelling Ave. S., 651-698-7874).

Sly Peoples, a South Carolina transplant, opened Status in May 2005, selling Billion Dollar Boys Club hoodies, Japanese jeans, and a wide variety of designer sneakers, including the Nike AF-1 and Nike Dunk. Familia, a skateboard boutique, sells high-end boards and equipment and a colorful array of skateboarding sneaks, most notably the relatively rare Nike SB line. The interior design at both Status and Familia is minimalist in a typical upscale boutique way, with shoes showcased like sculpture in a gallery. “We get people in here,” Peoples says, “that go, ‘Wow, I didn’t know you could get sneakers like this in Minnesota.’ ”

In some respects, Status’s well-heeled clientele might be a little too well-heeled: “Back in the day, we would wear a pair of sneakers until the brakes were off ’em,” Peoples says. “We would scrub ’em with toothbrushes and iron the laces to keep ’em fresh. That’s a lost art. Now, kids have money, so if they scuff their white AF-1s, they’ll just buy another pair.”