crooked tongues magazine News Features

The Nike Sportswear Lunar Macleay is a tremendous shoe. Like the Lunar Elite Trail Mid, it indicated that Nike's trend-division were making the most of new performance pieces like the Elite. If you've tried that shoe on, you'll be able to vouch for the comfort and how it can be implemented for casual wear too. As a result, the Macleay just works. The team behind it are obviously fans of classic ACG, as well as other favourites ...

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The Silas Pro model by adidas Skateboarding definitely warrants an inclusion in our pick of the year's best. We hadn't been floored by many of the new adidas models in 2010, but this was a glorious exception. We'd seen pieces like the Campus and Superstar reworked for Silas Baxter-Neal, but his shoe was something else entirely. Last year, Dennis Busenitz's Handball Spezial and Copa Mundial styled model blew us away, and this time, the Marathon TR ...

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We grew up wearing Converse, so it's been galling to not be able to shout out contemporary models on the site in recent years. They've done the heritage thing perfectly (the First String releases and Converse Addict replicas of original shapes have been superb so far), but we know there's more in store and we knew that Converse could still kill it with court shoes. When they officially announced the new wave (we're not talking Energy ...

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For another end-of-year holiday roundup we’ve sidestepped the usual fanboys, personalities and familiar faces in favour of the creative minds behind our favourite new shoes of the year to accompany the Best of 2010 Feature (which you can see right here). When we use the word “new,” we’re talking new models entirely, not another glut of retro+ makeups. 2010 was another big year for Nike’s Running wing. Lunar Glide IIs, Zoom Spider LTs and the Lunar Elite ...

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Christmas Day has been and gone, vol-au-vent ingestion has led to injury and we're all on a festive comedown. What's the solution? Well, other than the Crooked Sale, we like free things. Free things make everything okay and in association with our buddies at Penfield, here's another Crooked Christmas giveaway you might have noticed Penfield demolishing the competition on the outerwear front lately with lookbooks that stood out in a year speckled with dull outdoorsy photoshoots, good ...

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Every year we leave this write up until the very last minute. That's because we're lazy and because there's always a blast of last-minute brilliance before the year comes to a close. But as we just said, it's primarily down to being very, very idle. As ever, we're aiming to up a few designer Q&As to get some extra insight into what led to the creation of some of 2010's very best, but ...

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How the hell did we miss out on covering these earlier? Because we're idiots. Nike SB have always tried to push the more experimental side of things, but there was a time when the divide between Dunk and progressive pieces was so vast that the E-Cue and URL never stood a chance. If you couldn't even shift a simple Delta Force, the weirder pieces were destined to brick. Still, like all the best Nike pieces, there's a ...

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Jordan XIIIs represent the point when a fair few of the Jordan fans amassed over thirteen years either chose to keep on riding the franchise or quietly hop off. In our eyes it's a masterful piece of design that continued the line's then-habit of building on an element of a prior installment. The 'He Got Game' sports store scene put the hard sell on us cinematically, but then Spike had us under that spell since Mars Blackmon's ...

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For years we treated the adidas ZX Torsion designs as a no-go if you were looking to colour block them and try to apply your own identity to the shoe. This wasn't necessarily the case if you executed it right. We still think Patta's 7000 is overlooked. Our 9000 might have taken a spot of inspiration from other Torsion makeups, but we think we nailed it to some degree. Our in-house jury is out on the new styles ...

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If you attended the Crooked BBQ a few months back, you'll have noted that Mr. David Rodigan's set went hard in the paint (both literally and figuratively). Our friends at FABRICLIVE have given us a handful of copies of volume 54 in their ultra-consistent compilation series. Sly & Robbie, Baby Cham and Big Youth are in the mix and it's a strong soundtrack for drunken festive partying. Even David's son, recording as Cadenza gets in on the ...

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Wow. Retro Jordan XIs have become a Christmas tradition like vicious hangovers, Jimmy Stewart merrily sprinting through Bedford Falls or Bill Murray being stalked by a shotgun-wielding Bobcat Goldthwait. Even though the Cool Grey Jordan XI only dates back to 2001 as a Retro+ colourway, it's one of the rare occasions where the newer makeup matches the originals. We've long been of the opinion that makeups from a time when footwear designers had a heavy say in colourways ...

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The Reebok Pump Fury represents a peak for the Pump line. They were supposed to usher in a new wave of Insta Pump goodies, but post-Fury it was all downhill on the bladdered footwear front. Still, it's a masterpiece. Whether it was variations that implemented that handheld blister-packed pump device or the visible Hexalite on the midsole takes, it blew our minds. Not even the patronage of baked potato-spewing, high-hatted Brian Harvey of East 17 could blunt that appeal ...

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Reebok are really getting their money's worth out of a moodboard apparently laden with imagery of workboots-a-plenty. That's not a complaint—the byproduct of an apparent fixation with Red Wing and their fellow Bostonians, Timberland has been excellent. We really liked the Beef n' Broc-alikes a season or so ago, but the Ex-O-Fit Hi Basecamp (a continuation of the 1984 bestseller's 1990s upgrade) lifts DNA from a wheaty mainstay too. It's funny to see any of ...

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Once upon a time, the Nike Air Max 1 was the shoe of our dreams. The Air Max Light was the stuff of boyhood aspirations too. The notion of working with them when we were "grown up" was almost unthinkable. Well here we are working with the damned things, and we have to concede that we've been suffering from Air Max fatigue lately. Bar the occasional, truly inspired makeup, there's a good reason that most flock for those ...

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It's the most wonderful time of the year and in association with our buddies at Pointer—who've broken their non-collaborative habit to drop some superior, unexpected pieces alongside Comme, Liberty and Baracuta—we've got a giveaway going on. We're not in the business of begging friends, but if you get involved on our Facebook, you could be in with a chance of bagging one of the best casual hybrids we've seen in a while. The ...

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Carhartt are a brand that's always on-point. They were here before you discovered the joys of brown duck canvas and they'll be around when you've moved on too. After a few years when collaborations were kept to a bare bones minimum (though the Japanese Stussy and BAPE pieces were tough), they've dropped some considered gems this year with the likes of eYe Junya Watanabe and A.PC. that displayed a certain reverence for the power of ...

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The adidas Originals OT Pack has given us some decent versions of the best the brand offers. The OT Tech Forum Mid was a premium take on an old favourite that maintained the luxury dope dealer fresh of the original and this version of a Crooked HQ favourite is excellent. We're still not 100% on what OT necessarily indicates from a design standpoint—there's Tokyo-inspired minimalism and modifications, while the Originals Tech concept seems targeted at those whizzing ...

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After years of enduring a gulf between the mighty Equipment line and the Originals archive pieces, it looks like things are changing. Anyone would think adidas classicism hit a wall circa 1990 and that would be erroneous. Deeply erroneous. Don't sleep on the grey, green and white (and the red colour scheme too), or the Feet You Wear line, if we're talking '90s masterpieces. the EQT Support is one of the greatest sneaker designs ever. Stealthy, innovative and ...

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The Jordan Spiz'ike boot stays underrated. Sure, it's a calculated attempt to dent that Timbo market, but then so was the ACG Goadome —and you won't catch us talking shit about that shoe. Mixing and matching Hatfield-design DNA is always bound to cause some considerable grumbles, but the 6 Rings model is one of the better models—the Concord version filled a relatively affordable gap when newer retros weren't forthcoming. But with an upcoming XI and ...

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As the antithesis of some of the more elaborate shoes that are coming from Reebok, the brand's evidently taking the woven label retros pretty seriously. We saw some CT family in deep concentration talking to Reebok reps at the barbeque a few months back and hopefully that feedback will inform forthcoming seasons too. With the classics being executed correctly and some surprisingly decent updates and variations on existing technical themes on the horizon via the Fury Superlite and Omni ...

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The Nike Cortez is a definitive shoe and Nike have done a fine job bringing them back with a certain regularity but not playing them out again. The Cortez Lite, Cortez II, Cortez Special, Cortez Escape, Cortez Deluxe and Cortez Fly Motion have all done their jobs admirably over the years. The suede and leather versions are fantastic—Farrah and Forrest wore those well, but nothing beats the nylon variations. We don't look back at the jewel swoosh Cortez ...

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The adidas ZX 700 is a brilliant shoe from one of the best collections of running shoes ever created. That's our take on this model in Tweet-friendly length. Yet we haven't seen any excellent, simple versions that weren't adorned with lavish leathers, embosses, or transformed into a mid-cut boat shoe (incidentally, as a disclaimer—we hated that shoe to start but grew to quite like it. We're only human folks.) The whole ZX line is a ...

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Sometimes there's projects that don't make an awful lot of sense, but we give them the benefit of the doubt, just because they look so good. Theoretically, the son of All Conditions Gear and the Air Max line would look like 1995's awesome Air Mad Max. But this is late 2010 and the world of sports footwear is more retrospective and a great deal more baffling to decipher. The ACG Air Max 1s are just nice Max ...

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2013

• May (17)
• April (24)
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• February (27)
• January (28)

crooked tongues magazine News Features

CT Best of the Year: Nike Lunar Macleay Nate VanHook Q&A

CT Best of the Year: adidas Silas Pro Danny Kinley Q&A

CT Best of the Year: Converse Star Player Evo Brian Kutsch Q&A

CT Best of the Year: Nike Lunar Eclipse+ Chris Cook Q&A

Crooked Christmas Competition: Win a Penfield Underhill Bag

CT's Best of 2010

Nike SB Zoom FP

Air Jordan XIII 'Varsity Red'

More adidas ZX 8000s for 2011

Crooked Christmas Competition: Win FABRICLIVE Rodigan CDs

Air Jordan XI 'Cool Grey'

Reebok Pump Fury Superlite

Reebok Ex-O-Fit Plus Hi Basecamp

More Nike Air Max 1s for 2011

Crooked Christmas Competition: Pointer Benson

Vans x Carhartt Authentics: Christmas Competition

adidas OT Pack Campus 80s

adidas EQT Support

Air Jordan Winterized 6 Rings Boots

Reebok Phase III

Nylon Nike Cortez Blue/Sail

adidas ZX 700

Nike Sportswear 'ACG' Air Max 1

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