Sneaker shop has kicks culture
Posted on Sunday, April 13, 2008
At both the Friday and Saturday night hiphop shows in Little Rock the first weekend of April, the performers’ shout-outs from their respective stages — at Vino’s and the Rev Room, to be exact — included the usual round of hails to friends, fellow artists, beat producers, DJs and show promoters.
Save for record labels, recording studios and the name of the performance venue, businesses don’t tend to creep in to the acknowledgements section of a rap set, but in both cases the name of a new Little Rock retail establishment rang out, advancing the courtship ritual for the store’s target market further than any corps of chamber of commerce types, with their green blazers and oversized ribbon-cutting scissors, could hope to.
First at Maxximum Impact, an all-central-Arkansas rap bill at Vino’s, and then the following night during the Rev Room show by Lord T. and Eloise, a baroque Memphis-based hip-hop duo known for dressing as 18 th-century aristocrats, performers made sure to endorse Rock City Kicks, a new sneaker boutique that opened recently in the shopping district of Little Rock’s Hillcrest neighborhood. (The shop’s name blends a designation for the capital city with “kicks,” hip-hop-ese for footwear. )
The Lord T. of Lord T. and Eloise — that would be Lord Treadwell, the powdered wigwearing one, as opposed to the gold-bodypaint-wearing Maurice Eloise the XIII — even went so far as to wear a pair of sneakers he’d purchased earlier that day at the store, after Corey Bacon, the shop’s owner, had befriended the group on MySpace in advance of its tour stop here. The rapper’s Rock City kick of choice was a model from the line Reebok is calling its “bringback” campaign, a bid to restore the brand’s urban profile. It was a hightop sneaker streaked with shocking springtime hues of yellow, chartreuse and lime. “I would never wear this — ever,” Bacon said recently, holding a copy of the same shoe a few days after Lord T. passed through.
SNEAKER FREAKS A self-confessed shoe hound, Bacon maintains “wear” and “don’t-wear” closets for his collection and has flown to cities like Los Angeles, Atlanta and Kansas City to score limited-edition models. For everyday wear, he favors the current revival of Adidas Micropacers over the flashy fashion-based choices adherents of a hip-hop look might use to complement the colors of matching T-shirts, track jackets and baseball caps.
“I like flashy, but I’m not flashy,” said the 27-year-old, who rounds out his look with jeans and vintage Thin Lizzy concert T-shirts.
But far be it for Bacon to stand in the way of another aficionado letting his sneakerfreak flag fly. The opening of Rock City Kicks, under Bacon’s guidance in particular, is by one interpretation a signal that Little Rock has urbanized enough to harvest a sneakerculture crowd from within the independent scenes of skateboarding and hip-hop, rivers that feed streams of business toward collector-caliber shoe boutiques. (Not to mention the measure of wearers for whom, in an increasingly casual-wear world, the definition of “dress shoes” might refer to the price and pristine condition of a pair of Nikes, as opposed to anything combining brown leather and tassels. )
But in another way, Rock City Kicks represents the sort of “retailtainment” atmosphere that results when the city’s underground music scene asserts its aesthetic principles to give rise to the kind of space where they want to spend time and money.
Just as the trendy Little Rock bakery and bistro Boulevard Bread Co. reflects the ethos of the breed of twentysomethings who tend to earn college tuition money by working there — installing a DJ booth in its downtown location to suit do-it-yourself music tastes and implementing biodegradable disposable cutlery to appease customers’ environmental consciousness — Rock City Kicks manifests Bacon’s toehold in the music scene and his absorption of its cues about the kind of retail space that would present a companionable shopping experience.
“It helps to have the experience of being a party animal at one time and toning it down,” admits Bacon, whose succession of Conway homes, before he moved to Little Rock, were known for hosting house parties and rock shows. (At the same time, he insisted he is not pitching his store to an elite of either shoe snobs or hipsters: “The other day,” he said with unmistakable pride, “I sold a 75-year-old lady a pair of sweet Asics.” )
In addition to sneakers, the store’s inventory includes apparel, skateboards and CDs by Smoke Up Johnny, the rock band in which Bacon plays guitar. To capture the street fluency he wanted for the space, Bacon recruited Bob Noggins, better known to the city’s hiphop crowd as DJ Dirtbag, to tag the shop’s south interior wall with a graffiti rendering of the store name in red and blue.
THE FIFTH ELEMENT At a recent opening-night party, T. J. Deeter, the publisher of the music-scene-plumbing Localist magazine as well as a show promoter, operated the turntables. Nearby stood Bacon’s bandmate Alan Disaster, whose lanky frame, shoulderlength mane of hair and oversized glasses had been featured that week in a New York Times review of Shotgun Stories, the Arkansas-set independent film in which he played Shampoo Douglas. He sipped from a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
The people there to actually shoe-shop as opposed to lounge noted that Bacon had carved out shelf space for a line called Macbeth, a vaguely Gothic collection of black sneakers favored by skaters but also, for its cruelty-free standards, by vegans. He stocks the line at the request of a vegan friend who tends bar at the White Water Tavern and also worked at Vino’s Brew Pub. “I think probably half of Vino’s has these shoes,” Bacon said of the brand.
While giving streetwear enthusiasts a three-dimensional experience akin to flipping through hip-hop-oriented fashion magazines like Complex and Nylon might sound recreational, will it be profitable ?
“I’m hoping people go spend there,” said Ra Hearne, the Little Rock rapper, producer and promoter who performs as Rockst * r. Hearne bought a T-shirt from the brand Sneak Tip there, but for his first big sneaker purchase he’s waiting on the arrival of Nikes, expected in time for the next instore party on May 1, when he will also perform.
“People know the four elements of hip-hop are graffiti, breakdancing, MC-ing and DJing,” said Hearne. “Then they say the honorary fifth element is fashion. For anybody doing what I’m doing, as far as the music scene, I hope they would be into fashion at the same time.”
At any rate, Bacon was called on to demonstrate his shoe-selling acumen as well as his curatorial instincts in securing rights to stock brands like Adidas and Asics. Asics in particular was a hard sell, Bacon noted. The company demanded to see not only details of his financing and tax certificates but also evidence of how he intended to display the shoes. (Like any self-respecting sneaker-as-art fiend, Bacon arranges the shoes singly on gallery-style shelving, with no shoebox clutter in sight. )
But in return for his diligence, he was awarded the rights to color combinations — or what the sneaker industry calls colorways — on the Asics Onitsuka Tiger line not granted to mall stores.
Meanwhile, at the very least, the shop’s presence is shaking up a Little Rock burg more closely associated with Birkenstocks. For his opening party, Bacon resorted to DJs instead of his band because of the group’s reputation for neighbor-offending volume. (The band is currently working on a song called “Too Loud for Louisville,” in response to a gig on a recent tour cut short after one song, when police in the Kentucky town were summoned to the hosting bar after noise complaints. ) While many neighboring businesses host wine-and-cheese open houses the first Thursday of the month, the happy hours tend to shut down at 8 p. m. Bacon’s finally fizzled out around 1: 30 a. m.
“Next time I may have to get a porta-potty or something,” he said.
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