Emil Cienik

As much as we all love the sneaker game and the culture surrounding it, it’s not all sunshine and roses 100% of the time. Much like any other hobby, there are a few parts that aren’t so enjoyable, and sometimes you’ve gotta gripe about the bad parts of something you love. Here’s three things that aren’t so great in the sneaker game.

People Constantly Talking About Kanye

Sure, we talk about Ye’ a bunch over here at KicksOneTwo. Nothing wrong with that at all. However, it gets annoying when people try to act holier than thou by saying, “Oh, Kanye wore Vans, I suppose you all like Vans now??” Or, “If Kanye wore a sequined shirt and some bell-bottom jeans, I guess that’s what all of you would start wearing too, huh??” read more

You’re probably confused right now.

“The “What The Fieg” Gel Lyte III’s aren’t a must-have? But…but Ross just told me yesterday they were!! I just went out and dropped a rack on them because he convinced me I needed them!”

Granted, Ross did make a great argument as to why you need to own a pair of “What The Fieg’s”, but I disagree with him. You may have started the website, Ross, but you can’t tell me what I do and don’t like!! read more

If you were up late enough on Thursday night, (or woke up early enough Friday morning), chances are you had a pretty solid night. The “Black Friday” King Push EQT’s dropped without announcement at 2:00 a.m., and those who were up, and caught the links on Twitter soon enough COOKED (if you were wondering…I cooked).

Late-night sneaker Twitter was pretty happy, and plenty of jokes were made about how mad people were going to be when they woke up and found out they already lost. “You snooze, you lose” has never been more relevant. read more

It’s that time of year Once again, Nike has teamed up with Doernbecher Children’s Hospital and given 6 kids the opportunity to design their own shoe for the Doernbecher Freestyle collection. For those of you not too familiar with the DB collection, it is a yearly promotion with all proceeds going to the hospital, and is a great, meaningful collection.

Since today is the release day, I’m going to take a look at this year’s collection, and rank them in terms of worst to best. (Since I have no clue how to really get into ranking a women’s shoe, I’ll just give you my ranking now. Free TR5, best; Air Max 90, second-best). However, before I get into it, there’s one disclaimer: Anything said in this post is me being real about the shoe itself. Like I stated before, I think this is an unbelievably great fundraiser for the hospital, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for both Nike, and the children involved in the designing. However, that doesn’t mean I love every shoe that they released. Without further ado, here’s the 2015 Doernbecher Freestyle collection rankings: read more

Don’t reach, youngblood.

The “Uncle Drew” video series has been a favorite here at KicksOneTwo, so it’s pretty obvious that we were excited to see Pepsi team up with Nike to make the Kyrie 1 “Uncle Drew” sneaker. Overall, it’s a dope, very clean sneaker. You can never go wrong with an all white upper and a gum sole. Add onto that hints of red and blue, and Uncle Drew detailing — flames all around.

However, once I saw the whole special packaging that came with the shoes, I was instantly sold. I need this set for real.  read more

ICYMI: Legend Blue 11’s (such a stupid nickname) restocked on Nike via their semi-new raffle system.

ICYMI: I lost again.

If you tried to get a pair today, there’s probably a solid chance that you lost as well. It’s either that, or I’m just really unlucky when it comes to this stuff. Now that I think about it, I have a pretty bad track record when it comes to raffles. I should probably just stop getting my hopes up from now on.

However, if you’re like me and have successfully struck out on all of Nike’s raffle entries, you probably want to know why you haven’t been blessed with a pair yet. Is it just luck of the draw? Not likely. Today we’re going to take a look at some possible reasons why you can’t win on Nike: read more