crooked tongues magazine News Features

Hyperfuse Air Force 1s should have been a really bad idea. The AF1 is a sacred shoe, with Bespokes scrutinised and dismantled by Nicekicks comment section dwellers, despite the tons and tons of colourways that barely got a second glance from us by since the 2007 anniversary do. We still think the Air Force 25 is underrated though. We are quite taken with Hyperfuse. That's why we've made it a key part of our BBQ celebrations with Nike ...

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It's time for another one of those sessions where Complex have you cursing for forefinger fatigue. But that's how page views on a hundred-thousand-trillion are generated, yo. A Crooked affiliated rundown just went live on Complex.com with the top 50 running shoes on it. It's billed as "all-time" but it's more of a tactical cross section of our favourites. There's no Air Max BW, 96 or 97 there, no Air Internationalist, Vector or OG ...

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adidas and Star Wars has caused a few arguments in the office. There are some who feel that Lucas annihilated the franchise with the Ewok party music onto end theme on his return to 'Return of the Jedi' and hate the prequels with a passion for looking like bad PS2 games from a third-party developer. Those team members aren’t fans of the dayglo t-shirts with Boba Fett and a ghettoblaster at all. Then there’s some people in the ...

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When we're not having Mr. Burns and Smithers style money fights in the office, we actually discuss sneakers with a certain intensity. So for Carnival Bank Holiday we thought we'd throw some thing different into this section of the site. This actually ended up here after a conversation about just how underrated Tinker Hatfield's Nike Zoom JST Michael Johnson shoe was. Tinker's designed some absolute classics beyond the models he's most commonly associated with, but ...

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The Nike Air Max 90 has had plenty of reworkings over the years. Technically, this sacred cow of a shoe doesn't need a remix — the original will supersede any new take, whether it's a Moire mix, hybrid of more Max models or a merger with the Current, but the Hyperfuse variations are interesting. Especially when somebody cranks up the colours to near-imbecilic levels. Hyperfuse applied to classics has two key purposes — to let that layered look help you ...

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Brand spaces usually miss the point. Weird politics between progressive performance and heritage sometimes get in the way and through big budget executions, most of what we love about a brand is sapped. But if you've seen New Balance's spectacular Brand Experience store in Beijing, you'll know that they aren't half-stepping in their representation of both facets of the New Balance story. The recently opened New Balance store in NYC's Flatiron district goes all out ...

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These shoes are beauties. We told you that PUMA's Shadow Society collection was worth the wait. When in doubt, call in the connoisseurs to rework your shoes rather than some tit with a Grammy, because PUMA's own Illuminati don't go around causing disasters to increase the profits of the security companies they own. No, this secret society just creates good footwear that even Mobb Deep's Prodigy would approve of and David Icke would happily wear with ...

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The UK is a great place. We're proud that this nation is a bit more cynical and less prone to hype than many. That's probably a delusional mindset, but it means that we approach sports footwear a little differently, despite the globalisation of the industry, with blog platforms and release dates transcending territories. As a result, we champion any homegrown event that brings our disparate shoe tribes together, and we salute the Crepe City crew for rising from ...

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Have you ever noticed that we quite like hip-hop at Crooked Tongues? We've made things that rip-off Depeche Mode and Black Flag, but seeing as the store originally span off from what was originally a hip-hop site (big up all OG Spine Magazine crew), we'll always have a soft spot for that new-fangled rap music, where people talk rhythmically in rhyme over drums and stuff. When we got access to digital technology, flash video, file sharing and social ...

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This is another one of those shoes we should have covered here ages ago. But we forgot. For our money, the White, Concord and Maize Pegasus '92 reissue has been one of the best shoes of the year so far. It's a beautiful shoe and there's fierce office debate as to whether it's the best of all the Pegasus silhouettes. We'd still like to see the Pegasus GX, Pegasus ACG (the real-deal one), the Pegasus Plus ...

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Yes, it's a plain Nike Air Force 1. But while the Air Force 1 has been drifting from madcap application to application since the 2007 celebrations, our love for this classic was tarnished a little. We overdosed. But there were some great moments for the shoe too - the Futura releases, the whole Bespoke project (and we still believe that we repped for the UK quite nicely on that side of things), 1World editions, iD options when they were the ...

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Sunday the 4th of September will be a good day. This year we've dispensed with the usual email RSVP concept for something a little more structured (and trustworthy) in the quest to avoid the front door roadblock of the last two Crooked Tongues barbecues for the CT and NSW event this year. We're finalising the DJ lineup right now, we're trying to make sure there's actually a barbeque this year rather than chicken hurled out to ...

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Sorry for the vague amount of information here, but the PUMA Shadow Society is making some serious moves. We don't normally deal with teasers here unless it's our own BBQ, but having seen this collection of shoes in sample stage, they're banging and worthy of a spot here. We haven't been excited by some PUMA States since the size? efforts of late 2006. They seem to have been superseded by Suedes and Clydes of late, with ...

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The adidas Conductor is one of the greatest basketball shoes adidas ever made. Attitudes and Rivalrys are perfect too, complete with the Patrick Ewing affiliations, but back in the 1987 these went toe to toe with the Converse Weapon, Nike Air Force II and Reebok 6600, and they're the best of the brand's trio. In the 87/88 era, adidas's expensive court designs became must-haves in the hip-hop realm and from recent Conductor drops, their appeal seems ...

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This has been the summer where the Nike Air Max 90 got good again. We suffered deja vu colourway fatigue on this classic shoe — especially after amassing some colourways for that 50 Air Max 90 rundown for Complex and seeing what had gone before — but there's still mileage in it. We'd still love to see every late '90s Footaction and Foot Locker version in one place. The LIVESTRONG variations and Maize/Grey version from 2005 were some of ...

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The Crooked Tongues BBQ announcement is a little later than usual this year. Apologies for that. We didn't want to jinx it by posting up something that was so up in the air. But here it is. The Crooked Tongues BBQ will take place on Sunday the 4th of September in London with our friends at Nike Sportswear. There's some great DJs being lined up, alcohol (and hopefully soft drinks) will be free, it should run from around ...

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The adidas Originals Etrusco is a new shoe, but it's the sum of several road (and pitch) tested parts. We believe it's also one of Big Daddy C-Law's final significant releases from his tenure at adidas, and he knows exactly what he's doing. We liked the Votary releases last year for adiCup that flipped Copa Mondial football boots into a sneaker and we really, really like the Busenitz shoe from adidas Skateboarding that flipped the Copa ...

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Ah, the Air Jordan V. Arguably the one that sent the franchise stratospheric in the UK and the shoe that'll still cause nostalgia attacks, the fifth Jordan's fighter plane influenced jagged details and menacing stance, reflective tongue, lacelocks and gloriously non-symmetrical collar heights stay classic. Some of you might remember the 2000 retro sitting around for a short while (We're pouring out a little Red Bull for Brixton's Foot Locker branch right now) and you don ...

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This is a shoe that baffles us a little. The 1981 off road proto-ACG classic merged with a 1985 college basketball borderline budget release isn't an obvious or logical one. Oh, and they're officially ACG now too. If we were to try and link the two, the Nike Lava Dome evokes memories of stern-faced sneaker types circa 1998 and the Dunk evokes memories of stern-faced sneaker types circa 2001. So it's a mixture of two shoes that ...

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If you stood us in a hall or wherever they play the sport and ordered us to play handball, we'd probably flounder, but the shoes are generally awesome. adidas couldn't stop making great stuff between the '60s and early '80s. Family rifts and several factories seemingly operating independent of the central brand couldn't stop that - it's staggering that nobody's taken the time to put those archives into a book. Sports we don't pay too ...

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Yes. Yes. Yes. This is the antidote that cuts through the crap out there. The Nike Lava Dome is the kind of shoe that unites the Crooked audience. Who can't appreciate this model? The story and end product are sneaker perfection as a standalone but the daddy of a ton of offroad classics. Harking back to 1981 the Lava Dome was pitched in that nifty ad with John Rosklelley and company larking about at basecamp on the imposing K2 ...

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The curious twinning of a 1980s adidas Campus and a Superstar Vintage silhouette that dates back to a decade prior continues here. This duo still kills it like this month's nylon variations and prove that the legacy of these shoes is unbreakable. You can chuck whatever you want at the Superstar Vintage and it'll weather it...suede, leather — it even managed to sustain that slew of reptile fabrics a few years back, but the Campus is an easier ...

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As long as adidas keeps bringing out an excellent ZX 8000 every month, we'll keep spotlighting them. Of course, as temperatures in the capital soar, an all-leather version of this lightweight 1988 classic seems a little masochistic. But these are set for September, when it's almost certain that our five days of summer will crash and burn, and mesh toeboxes and synthetic suede will be an ill-fated combo to take on an outing. It's bizarre that we ...

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2013

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crooked tongues magazine News Features

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PUMA Shadow Society States: First Drop

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Get Crooked Tongues BBQ Tickets NOW

PUMA Shadow Society

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adidas Originals Etrusco

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adidas Originals Archive Pack Handball 5-Plug OG

Nike Sportswear Air Lava Dome 2.4 QS

Nubuck adidas Campus 80s & Superstar Vintage

adidas Originals ZX 8000 Red/Wheat

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