Kanye West
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Kanye West’s kicks are generating more buzz than his romance with Kim Kardashian.
New Yorkers are going Kanye crazy over his Nike Air Yeezy 2 sneakers, which are going on sale in only a handful of Manhattan stores tomorrow.
Sneakerheads have been camped outside Foot Locker’s House of Hoops store in Herald Square since Tuesday for a chance to plunk down $245 for the high-tops. Fans are also expected to rush a Harlem House of Hoops tomorrow.
“I’m a huge fan of Kayne,” said Daniel Rivera, 19, of Clifton, NJ, who has been camping out with buddy Miles Morillo near the Herald Square shop since Tuesday. “I’ve always been a big sneaker person. I haven’t bought an expensive pair in a while, but this pair brought me out of retirement.”
Rivera and Morillo were the first in line. They go home in shifts for food and personal hygiene.
More than 30 people were lined up at the store.
“I’ve been sleeping out here, just going home to shower, and getting right back.” said Morillo, of the Upper West Side.
“It’s a beautiful shoe,” he said. “I’m doing this for my love of shoes. I’ll actually wear mine.”
Which is more than fan Jonathon Scott can say.
“I wear them once or twice and keep them in a box for the rest of the year,” the student said.
Preordered pairs were attracting sky-high bids on eBay. One pair hit nearly $90,000 before the seller or auction house removed it yesterday morning.
Others were receiving bids as high as $7,000.
Nike says it is making only 3,000 to 5,000 pairs available for sale.
Other shops, like KITH NYC, are raffling purchase passes. Winners will be notified today.
“We’re doing a raffle instead of having 6,000 people waiting in line for three days,” said Pete Forester, operations manager. “We’re going to pull from the raffle to match up the pairs and we’re going to call [the winners] to let them know that they have the option to buy them. On Saturday those people who have been chosen can come in and purchase the pairs so we avoid the madness.”
KITH, like other stores carrying the sneakers, will be beefing up security.
“This is the biggest sneaker release in history,” Forester said. “There are a lot of passions around this, we want to make sure that we bring logic and some sort of temperance to the situation so that people’s emotions don’t overtake them and get into a place that’s unsafe.”
The last two big sneaker releases were in December, when a new Air Jordan hit the market and in February when the Nike Galaxy Foamposites came out, sparking fights and vandalism.
Sneaker collectors are used to the long waits and the anticipation, but the recent spat of violence and intense resale market is a recent trend.
“After the chaos of the Galaxy Foams over all star weekend, the sneaker game has changed,” Thomas Conway, 24, told The Post. “I miss the days when you could walk into a store and buy the newest uptowns or [Jordans]. Those days are over. Now it’s all about flipping the kicks to make an extra buck.”
The new protocol being used for this release comes as no surprise, based on the frenzy that this shoe is expected to cause, but is still a bit disappointing for veteran collectors.
“In terms of anticipation and hype, this release is definitely up there,” Conway, who has over 12 years of collecting experience, said. “At the end of the day, the last thing managers want is a line down the block outside their store front for over a week. Raffles dampen the hype a little bit, but prevent the potential for both riots and violence like what happened during the Galaxy release.”