The Sneakers we wear with our jeans

[Niro]

From mostly only wearing boots, I've turned into a bit of a sneakerhead now.

Anyway, here is one of my favourite sneakers to wear during fall. New Balance 990v4 'olive incense' colourway with my Oni 546-ZR

[paulm]

loving my New Balence CT500

[Double 0 Soul]

Odd Future Vans from 8yrs ago and SC47s from 18yrs ago

[Broark]

New Balance 991v2 made in the UK.

[Double 0 Soul]

Dead pair of Stars & Bars after a year or so in the workshop 

[bod]

On 1/13/2025 at 9:29 PM, Broark said:

New Balance 991v2 made in the UK.

I live about a half mile away from the factory where they were made 

[Broark]

29 minutes ago, bod said:

I live about a half mile away from the factory where they were made 

Very cool! They’ve been releasing a lot of nice colorways recently. The 991v2 is super comfy. 

[Double 0 Soul]

My summer shoe for this year..

Nike Elite 1978 repros.. from 2018

Original materials and detailing

Suade is slightly faded and washed out.. Tongue and foam mid has slight yellowing to mimic vintage originals

Waffle sole, exposed foam tongue.. Phwoar!

Vintage 1977 Nike advert.. repros come with both blue and white laces..

1978 Nike ad..

[CSL]

Those are cool. I've recently started to become attracted to the kind of sneakers that look like those we wore in the late 70s. Adidas, Puma, etc. So far I've resisted the urge but since they're so affordable compared to heritage stuff, I may succumb soon...

[chicote]

Have you all heard of Panam sneakers?

They’re a brand I saw a couple of times around Mexico, and embarrassingly and chauvinistically wrote them off as probably some pair of off-brand Nike/Adidas knockoffs. The swoosh /and/ the stripe?? It seemed too over the top to be anything else.

Well, on a whim one day, I walked into one of the many retail stores they have around the country, and subsequently found out I had the story completely backwards. Not only is Panam a very well-established sneaker brand, and one of the longest-running made-in-Mexico fashion brands around, but it actually /predates/ Nike by almost a decade, being founded in 1962.

So, out of curiosity and maybe feeling a bit humbled by my error, I got a pair: the “084” model in white & gum.

(placeholder for photo)

I’ve had them for close to three months now and am honestly very impressed, coming from experience mainly with Nike Dunks and a couple pairs of New Balances. My pair cost just over $25 USD, but to me they stack up well against a good portion of the major US sneaker brands. The soles are quite thin (they sometimes have a reputation here that you can feel pebbles beneath your feet as you walk) but as an upside, they’re very flexible and easy to wear in.

Anyway, I don’t have too much else to say, but hope this is interesting to someone - or if you have a pair I’d love to hear how you like them!

[Double 0 Soul]

I've seen them^ at a few Japanese web shops.. i quite like them

[Well27]

Looks cool the panam sneakers!

I’ve really come to like my Flower Mountain sneakers.

got them last year, was looking into NB but the ones I tried were too dadish or to wide for my the feet.

These fit me well and are light weight.

i like the small details with it not being overdone (imo).

had to swap the original laces, as they were reflecting light and felt quite corpcore-ish.

Edited February 23 by Well27
Types and stuff

[Broark]

I've always found Flower Mountain sneakers kinda interesting, but they just feel a bit busy for my tastes.
Honestly they look better with some wear compared to the product photos.

[Well27]

Yeah i can see that, the change of laces and a bit of wear helped quite a bit:)

[Cold Summer]

NB MIUSA 995.

i bought these back in 2017 and for years I wore them quite infrequently. They seemed hot and stuffy at the time, and I also seemed to constantly get static electricity zapped when wearing these, especially getting out of a car after driving, which never happened with any other sneakers I wore.

The last three years or so, though, they’ve become probably my most worn pair of sneakers, and they’re still going strong. It seems like they broke in somehow, they feel much more comfortable and no longer stuffy, and although static zaps do still happen on occasion, it's far less frequent now.

Edited February 25 by Cold Summer

[Double 0 Soul]

I spotted these while walking through student-ville last week.. 

..they were in the window of one of the flats, I couldn’t see what they were and it wasn’t immediately apparent so I held my phone above my head and stood on my tiptoes to get a photo then went back to work and found them on the   webz 

luckily nobody saw me.. if you think this is unusual  behaviour, just imagine the sneax are jeans and it’ll make perfect sense 

Edited February 26 by Double 0 Soul

[Double 0 Soul]

Check the symmetry of the right heel..

No way these are Nike Tailwind.. listed on eBay.. 100% seller, NIB with no legit check

Edited February 26 by Double 0 Soul

[Toegun]

My Flower Mountains, been wearing them for a while, super comfy from the get go. 

[Double 0 Soul]

More Waffling..

Deadstock 2012 Vntg Elites

Yellowing mid

Washed out suede

Even the mould spots on the laces are intentional repro.. to mimic the appearance of boxed vintage

1971 - 1980 Golden age of Nike..

Oh Mama!

Iconic 70s swoosh shape

2012 - 2013 Vntg Repro

Edited yesterday at 07:06 PM by Double 0 Soul

[smoothsailor]

Nice , I’ve been eyeing those ld 1000.

i need to grow over my antipathy against nike. Plus I don’t need them

[Maynard Friedman]

Out of all the Nike trainers around, those 70s/80s running shoes are by far the best, but like smoothsailor, for some reason it’s not a brand I’d ever buy. Last pair of Nike I bought for myself must have been 25-30 years ago!

[Double 0 Soul]

The LD1000 Vntg in the purple colourway is a thing of absolute beauty

26 minutes ago, smoothsailor said:

i need to grow over my antipathy against nike.

I look on them the same way i look at Levi's..

I love Levi's but i would never entertain buying a pair of modern 501s, i prefer to buy a JP repro.

Yet i highly covet golden age Levis, it's the same shit with Nike.. these shoes are repros from a golden era when a pair of university students keen on distance running were trying to produce a better running shoe and much like Levi's became a victim of their own success..

Edited yesterday at 08:00 PM by Double 0 Soul

[Maynard Friedman]

But if they’re repros of golden era Nike, then surely they’re the sportswear equivalent of LVC and I don’t think you’re that keen on them?

[ATWM]

47 minutes ago, smoothsailor said:

Nice , I’ve been eyeing those ld 1000.

i need to grow over my antipathy against nike. Plus I don’t need them

Nah, that antipathy is just fine. 

[Double 0 Soul]

20 minutes ago, Maynard Friedman said:

But if they’re repros of golden era Nike, then surely they’re the sportswear equivalent of LVC and I don’t think you’re that keen on them?

Because Japanese denim companies do it better.. nobody produces a better 70s era Nike repro runner than Nike themselves 

[Maynard Friedman]

^ Good point!

[Double 0 Soul]

I appreciate that modrn day sportswear giant Nike is a hiddeous thing.. but it wasn't always this way, back in the brands infancy they were just a couple of innovative distance runners.

In regards to this^ Waffle era.. this was a guy eating breakfast.. looking at his families much loved waffle iron.. a cherished wedding gift no less which he poured liquid rubber into to create the sole of a running shoe.. It sounds like something i would do .. and i love this about the brand nearly as much as i love Jacob Davis using rivets to hold a pair of denim pants together..  plus the pull of nostalgia is massive, when i was a young penniless vintage shopper, nylon Nike runners and vintage Levi's where my way of life.. it was cheap and not many other folks wanted them.. hindsight ect..

[ATWM]

^ Yea I’m not gonna claim any moral high ground here. I have a pair of their skate shoes from 10 years ago or so I still kick around (I got them on clearance). But, as a company they are pretty damn odious, much like Levi’s. I don’t think, even if Levi’s made an actual perfect stitch for stitch reproduction of their vintage jeans I would be interested at this point. Maybe if they kick started White Oak to get up and running again and gave those people back their jobs I’d think about it? But probably not.

But I really don’t like Nike personally because of what they did to skateboarding. Nike getting in was a big part of it changing a lot in ways that for me - drove the culture in an uninteresting direction. I appreciate some like the advancements and competitive and institutional nature their entry had a role in ushering in. I didn’t. Smaller skate shoes companies had a much better shot and even stayed somewhat solvent much more often before they entered. Basically, they had a major role in killing off or badly damaging a lot of the brands that would trigger that same nostalgia for me.

Funny enough, in my teenage years, my other sport for a good while was distance running - I ran XC - but I always liked running in Asics better and set all my old (mediocre) PR’s in those. Japanese brand. Go figure. 

[Maynard Friedman]

I’m a bit older than 00, so I wasn’t even aware of Nike until my early teenage years. The holy grails of my formative years were always adidas and Puma - and for me, if I’m looking at a classic pair of trainers for knocking about in, it will always be those, particularly the ‘terrace’ style, although I don’t really like that term.

[MJF9]

This got me thinking back though there is always a risk given the huge time-span that I conflate years.  Like Maynard, school years were predominantly Adidas - Adidas shoes (Corsica, Dakar), Samba, Bamba etc - and many hours were spent in Liverpool at Wade Smiths lusting after rare af German Adidas imports (think we discussed this a few years back).  Though I fondly recall getting a pair of Hi-Tek Silver Shadow, which doubled up for running and knocking around it.  I remember bouncing out of the shop in them (yep wore them straight off the bat) like they were the best thing ever with the comfort making up for the fact they weren't the coolest pair... yet.  We had a 200m cinder/gravel athletics track at school... I'm pretty sure I was wearing the Hi-Tek when I broke the 400m school record... not intending for gratuitous self PR here... I mention it because my lad and I were comparing times at similar age... and I had to make the point that he's wearing carbon fibre spikes weighing 125g per shoe on a modern 400m track, whereas I was skidding around corners on gravel in my 1.25kg shoes (ok slightly exaggerated but you get the point).  The only Nike I had in my yoof were spikes. 

Given the advances in running shoes and running tracks, it makes World Records like David Rudisha's 800m in 1.40.91 from 2012 and Seb Coe's UK record of 1.41.73 from 1981 (44 years ago) all that more remarkable.  I love the Nike Waffles from OO but they wouldn't cut it for serious athletes these days given the advances in technology.  Very nice for 'feet-up Fridays' though!!