Editor’s note: Today’s guest drop for SFU comes from our esteemed professor at Yale University’s Flavorful Studies department, the GrandMaster.
To the faithful, the addicts, and fiends:
You know I keep putting you onto that slept-on gold. You can basically consider each word posted in this little corner of the interwebs as a map to some chest of hidden sneaker treasure, forgotten by the ages only to be dusted off and put on display right here like a museum curator carefully placing a set of rare butterflies on the walls of a hallowed and worn exhibition hall. That is what a rare pair of kicks are anyways: exotic finds, glimpsed only by explorers of the concrete Serengeti and those fortunate enough to come into contact with us. The joints that stay popping on my feet are veritable lectures in motion. The subject? Style, grace, design, and flyness.
Anyhoo, our topic today is Nike’s BLUE RIBBON SPORTS Air Force III “Samurai Pack” High.
Before they got all Greek mythology on our asses, Nike was founded in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports. Forty years later, the name done changed but the game remains, and Nike is attempting to rejuvenate Blue Ribbon Sports as an urban line carried only by special Nike accounts (Niketowns and some specialty retailers), with a line from kicks to denim to outerwear and tees. One of the first packs dropped under this name was a set of four sneakers inspired by Japanese themes (as if 95% of the so-called “streetwear” industry isn’t these days), including an AF-1 Lo, Dunk Hi, Air Trainer SC, and this Air Force III High.
Air Force III’s are not exactly the most popular shoes out there, and i can understand why. The AF1 has a classic silhouette with clean lines and iconic detailing, while AFIII’s have some of the most random-assed fabrication I have seen in a shoe. I count at least 11 different panels and color-blocking positions on the sneaker that you can see just in the side shot above, and that leads to a shoe that can look real cluttered, if not outright poorly designed, given some of the ass colorways that Nike has dropped these in. Add in the fact that the Three has a wider, lower, profile than the 1, and you have a sports shoe that is outdated and combines some of the most awkward features of a Dunk and an Uptown.
But there is one factor of these shoes that makes all the difference…
Nike wants me to call these kicks ‘Samurai Highs’. Well I call them my DECEPTICONS aka the MEGATRON AFIII’s.
Without even bringing the New York of the 1980s into this and why the name MEGATRON still rings out through the City and culture of DP DOT COM, the Transformers cartoon was that ish for many of us growing up. I remember watching the Dinobots episode so many times we wore through the VHS cassette and had to make a back-up onto a second cassette just so that I didn’t wear down my parents’ VCR head[ll].
Throughout their various animated incarnations, Megatron and the Deceps always repped the purple and gray. Since 60-foot-tall robots do not usually wear rags, this was expressed in their paint jobs and color schemes.
I don’t believe that some Nike designer did not have the ‘Cons directly in mind when choosing the colors for this pair of sneakers. There are three shades of purple, ranging from a majestic maroon to a sort of blueberry-bluish purple, and they fit neatly against the clean black-and-white colorway of the other panels and the flat matte black laces.
The colorway is alone, either, in evoking primal memories of gargantuan Japanese fighting robots. The materials used on this shoe fit perfectly into a mechanical theme, with a gridded-off nylon (?) weave around the ankles and on the toebox, and an amazing carbon-fiber-like material around the heel and front pieces. Factor in the touch of patent leather on the lace guards and ankle support, and I am actually surprised that these kicks don’t transform into some kind of futuristic alien gun-toting wolf-cat hybrid.
I have not seen these joints in a store in a long minute, but when I found them in the Fall of 2006 on clearance in a store that has since burned down, they ran me $40. Seeing as how these are premiums that were supposed to retail around $100, I am OK with that. If luck is with you enough to see them at around that price, I’d urge you to cop. Or don’t, and holler at a brother. I need two pair.
–Grand Master
