Sneakalicious: Jordan on My Mind

I love sneakers. Love, love, love them. If we were still five years old and you asked me if my sneakers were a man, would I marry them? My answer, unequivocally, would be yes.

But since we are no longer five years old and I can't (at least not in the state of New York anyway) marry my sneakers, I'm just going to have to settle for swooning over new releases and slowly adding to my collection. Which brings us now to Sneaker Freaker's sneak peek of the new Air Jordan collection for Nike, due to release later this month. Some of these sneakers I wouldn't even let buy me a drink, but then there are others that, as Tracy Jordan would say, I'd let take me behind the middle school and get me pregnant.

Case in point:

Look at these shoes. Just look at them. Such a solid throwback. These shoes make me want to be like Mike. In fact, if I were to wear these shoes, I know I could be like Mike. I don't care if I'm only 5'4" and wear a size 6.5 youth shoe, I'm fairly confident I could land a dunk from the foul line with these sneakers on my feet. No problem.

Okay, so both of these sneakers are pretty ugly on their own. But if you take the color scheme of the shoe on the left (Air Jordan 2 Retro QF) and the black sole/tip and overall pattern of the shoe on the right (Jordan Pro Strong), you get the closest thing I've seen in years to my first ever pair of basketball sneakers (Jordan XIII). Which I continued to wear for several months after they were far too small for my adolescent feet. Those sneakers may or may not have been the causal factor when I broke my toe during a game. But you know what? It was worth it because my kicks looked awesome.

This last pair isn't very basketball-y, but it is very SB Dunk-y, so I need them. Usually I want my sneakers to have as many colors as possible, but there is something alluring about the solid maroon with the black accented swoosh and little touch of purple on the sole that I really love. And check out that black tongue—just like a giraffe. Everyone else remembers that episode of Salute your Shorts, right?