From The Muddy Banks Of The Great Gray-Green Greasy Limpopo River

All set about with fever trees

I would like to begin this week by welcoming back one of my favorite shoe color schemes of years past, the gray/white/black/dark green combo that I personally trace back to the first run of the original Kalis model on DC, released in 2000 or so.* (Try as I may, Google turns up nothing helpful and unlike certain Canadian blogs I don’t have vast expanses of frozen tundra on which to stack boxes of old sneakers into fun igloo shapes.) Basically, the upper (?) was gray, with dark green detailing; the midsole (??) was white and the bottom of the sole was black. In a time of kaleidoscopic D3 color-feasts I remember marveling at the relative subtlety of the whole deal and, upon purchase and wear, even earned a personal thumbs up from the best skateboarder in town at the time. These were charmed days to be sure.

Anyhow, I got a very bizarre but also disturbingly welcome sense of skateboard shoe deja-vu when I spied this new color of Lakai Telfords on deck for release sometime this year (below), and only a month or so later saw a pair of Adio shoes (above) in Thrasher that tapped pretty much the same palette.

Now, I thought I saw a similar color of Etnies Raps somewhere recently, which would make this color a certified trend and also certify me as a footwear trendspotter, all but assuring my escape from WordPress skid row and onto one of those street fashion websites that Lupe Fiasco or the Cool Kids name-check in their conscious-but-not-really-conscious hip-hop songs. (I assume I also would get rich at a certain point.)

*Probably the idea predates this, but I haven’t any clue at all.

Like a rock

So Adio’s done, it looks like. The big names are off the team list and rumors are flying that the suits up top–remember, it’s Jarden now, not K2–are pulling the plug. Fare thee well, Adio. I’ll always remember the futuristic 3D graphics in “One Step Beyond.”

Bam supposedly is already suiting up in his other multinational skate company’s shoe line, and you know the birdman will be just fine. Maybe he’ll go back to Airwalk. Kenny Anderson may have signed on with Converse, and Brian Sumner, god help him, has signed his sole over to NSS (groan-inducing in more than one way).

The guys you have to feel for are the Danny Montoyas and the Steve Nessers. Dudes who might not be past their prime, but they’re a long way from being the hot shoe of the week. Montoya’s had enough shoes out at this point, he’ll be ok, but poor Nesser just put out his pro model, and if Adio goes into the dumper it’ll probably be shipping straight to the Ross bargain bin. Nesser’s skating never really got me too excited, aside from a couple tricks here and there, but I had to hand it to him for making the most of what he had, with the significant burden of a pretty major tribal tattoo. I can just imagine him taking that first tentative push down the ramp at Tampa while Tim O’Connor salivates all over the microphone. It can’t be easy. At least Nesser has a shop to fall back on, as everyone knows that line of business is a total goldmine.

Does Shaun White still skate for Adio? Maybe him and Tony Hawk should just buy the company and run it like a halfway house for downtrodden vert skaters. They could hook up Alex Chalmers while they’re at it.