Special to The News
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Jesús Alcántara sits cross-legged on the floor of his Mexico City skate shop, completely encircled by sneakers. Some are simple, black canvas shoes; others are wildly designed, hand-painted high-tops. Some sneakers boast shockingly electric neon prints; others don subdued, dark shades.
Alcántara, 20, owns more than 150 pairs of sneakers, together worth around 150,000 pesos ($10,600). And he's just getting started.
Mexico City's "sneakerhead" culture has steadily risen over the past two years, and more consumers, mostly young men, are hunting down the latest, hottest shoes on the market.
Alcántara, who recently opened his DRGN and Dragon Skateboard high-end boutiques, said he did most of his early collecting on the Internet or during visits to New York City. He bought his most prized pair, the Nike Dunk SB Paris, online for $200 in 2003. Only 202 pairs were released, and the shoe today retails at $4,000.
With more sneaker and skate shops sprouting up in fashionable neighborhoods like Roma Norte and Polanco, however, the young entrepreneur is buying more of his highly coveted shoes right here in Mexico City.
YEARS IN THE MAKING
Sneakerhead fanaticism was born in the United States more than 20 years ago, when basketball legend Michael Jordan and sporting giant Nike released the first line of Air Jordan sneakers. The obsession gained traction through American hip-hop artists rapping about their sneakers.
The footwear industry quickly took notice, capitalizing on the craze by designing unique, eye-catching shoes and offering them in select boutiques in limited quantities. Collectors started hoarding shoes as personal trophies, often buying two pairs of the same shoe: one to store and one to wear. Others saw themselves as businesspeople, buying a pair for a relatively low price and watching the value skyrocket over the years.
Today the sneakerhead community in the United States is sizable, with collectors possessing thousands of pairs and waiting days in line for pairs fresh off warehouse shelves.
The trend made its way to Mexico City's barrios in the early 1990s, particularly via "packets" of sneakers - large, illegally sequestered shipments - to its informal tiangui markets. The culture grew bit by bit through friendly exchanges, having little to do with American hip-hop.
But while the sneakerhead moniker in the United States is a way of life, in Mexico it's still an indulgence.
"It's their rice and beans," Pablo Romo said of U.S. collectors. Romo runs CANVAS, a Mexico City magazine devoted to sneaker culture.
"Here, even if you're a collector, sneakers are seen as a luxury. Very few people see [shoes] as their rice and beans," he said.
Mexico City's sneakerhead scene today is relatively tiny, and only a select few can put the time and money into building vast collections. Most sneakerheads aren't necessarily collectors; they simply buy the shoes as fashion statements.
Yvan Granados, 24, guesses around 300 true sneakerheads circulate in the city, and only a handful have amassed thousands of pairs over 10-plus years of collecting.
Granados works the storefront at Shelter, the Roma Norte boutique responsible for Nike shoes' proliferation throughout the city. Shelter was a pioneer enterprise on Calle Colima, a street now lined with sneaker and clothing specialty shops, and its owner opened Nike Sportswear in Condesa last year.
Shelter's cheapest pair of Nikes runs around 1,200 pesos ($85); special-release editions can sell for more than 12,750 pesos ($900).
Competition between boutiques is friendly and beneficial, he said, as most stores hold monopolies on certain lines. If a customer comes in looking for Ice Cream sneakers, for example, Granados sends them down the street to his friends at Headquarter. For Italian-made Common Projects, he sends them to DRGN.
SNEAKER UNDERGROUND
Despite the notable success of Shelter and its Calle Colima counterparts, Mexico City's boutiques are mainly competing with the same tianguis from the sneaker culture's earliest years.
Market stalls in Tepito, for example, form virtually endless lines of sneakers. Packets continue providing both fakes and originals, which sell for a fraction of their genuine retail value.
"It's very unlikely that you'd have a certain brand in a store that you couldn't find in a tiangui," Romo said. "Sneakers in tianguis are much more attractive than those in stores. In a tiangui, you can buy a pair of shoes for 100 pesos that actually cost 5,000 pesos."
Granados said he's not worried about losing his clientele to the tianguis, even as the stalls' cheap prices grow more attractive in today's grim economic climate.
"If an important model arrives in the store, the sneakerheads will still come and buy their pairs without a problem," he said.
Maintaining the bottom line in most boutiques, however, has meant upping the price of merchandise and stocking fewer lines of shoes.
Granados said Shelter used to sell an average of six pairs of sneakers per day, but now the store averages only three pairs.
Romo said true sneakerheads should be cushioned from financial strain because they've faced economic crises before.
"The true collectors already know where to find certain models, to buy them and request them in advance," he said. "Those who have just started in the past year or two, I think the crisis will affect them most."
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