These Sneakers. I Need Them.

Remember Beanie Babies? Everyone was obsessed with them. Including me. A new batch of them would come out each month or so, and then the previous ones would become "retired," meaning they were no longer manufactured and were therefore worth a zillion times more than they were just a few weeks ago. Some of them would go for $5000. These are plastic bean-filled stuffed animals no bigger than a shoe that probably cost six cents to make. But I didn't care. I had to have as many as possible in hopes that they would someday become rare and valuable and support my first down payment on a car.

Well, a few years later, no one could care less about them. I now have several huge boxes in my attic brimming with bean-filled dogs, roosters, dragons, rabbits...all with the coveted "ty" heart tag still attached on their ears. Some of these tags have protective plastic coverings on them to ensure they never became separated from the Beanie Baby, because then it would be worthless.

 

They are all now exactly that, tag or no tag. 

I hadn't felt that intense desire to have something material in years, until I saw these sneakers in Nylon magazine (pictured above). Nike collaborated with the magazine to create these limited edition neon solid-colored version of the Nike Dunk Hi. I needed to have a pair. I am a sucker for anything neon, after all.

The magazine said they were only available at certain Urban Outfitters stores in NYC. So I called all of them (there are three), but no one seemed to know what the deal was with these sneakers. And I kept getting disconnected. So then I called up the Nike store in the city, where no one knew what was going on with them either. Everyone had been waiting for them to arrive, but they just never showed up. These damn sneakers. They are like that flaky friend everyone has.

Miraculously, the manager of the Nike store called me back and told me the pink and green ones had already been released two weeks ago only on urbanoutfitters.com and they were sold out. Dammit, I wanted the green ones. But the other three were being released on the 15th. 

Right now, it is June 14th, 11:14 pm. I am waiting for the clock to strike midnight, when I will swiftly log onto urbanoutfitters.com and see if these sneaky sneakers are actually for sale. If they are (and are under $150), I am getting them. In blue. Maybe orange. And telling my parents it's an early 21st birthday present.