crooked tongues magazine News Features

At Crooked Tongues we've noticed a certain level of hype about the Nike Galaxy Foamposite One. We're getting a size run or so of these bad boys and we want to make sure that our retail pairs end up in the hands of the UK heads, but we're also giving a pair away. The possibility of owning a pair free of charge is international. We decided to only sell to the UK on this one because of ...
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Having younger staffers around doesn't just make us feel old - it offers us a fresher perspective on old favourites and established sneaker lore. For years, the Nike Night Track was a favourite with Gallic collectors and Japanese fanatics, giving it legendary status. We've seen plenty of other oddball releases along the way, like Killshot rollerskates, Terra Rainbows, Omega Flames, Alohas and palid patterned Internationalists, but 1978's Night Track remains one of the oddest Nikes ever. At this ...
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For a lot of us, the Flight series had almost as much impact on us at its time of release, as the Jordan line did. We were denied the Jordan III and the Nike Air Flight Low led the charge for a new breed of Nike basketball shoe that was expensive but well distributed. This design, marginally better than the EPMD-endorsed high version of the Flight's 1989 debut via the combo of that sole unit (as seen on the ...
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The Dunk's got an undisputed classic appeal and in the past 12 months, it's seen a certain futuristic take on matters seeing to a Hyperfuse build and now a nod to space travel. NASA's Kennedy Space Centre is the inspiration for this year's NBA All-Star pack, which has kicked up a major fuss as we see a resurgence back on the sneaker hype train with the Foamposite One 'Galaxy' — no official nickname led us to label ...
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22feb 12
Did you ever think New Balance would amass the hype we've witnessed for the brand over the last twelve months? Best of all that interest has been directed at purer NB makeups that make use of navy, grey and black rather than any unnecessary boldness. This is a brand that speaks with its silhouettes and quality rather than shouting to get into the spotlight. At present we're witnessing two booms — a market who are starving for old runners ...
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Five years ago, we found ourselves getting desperate in the quest to find new shoes with the scope to be future classics. We're talking classics, not the close but no cigar status of a few mid '00's sleepers and just as we resigned ourselves to lives spent trapped in a constant limbo of reissue after reissue (then back to the start again) Flywire and Lunarlon arrived to form the basis and backbone of some of the best shoes ...
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It's tough to get excited about the Nike Air Max 90 these days, but some fine makeups still drop to raise our temperatures over a shoe that's been issued in so many colours that they've gone full circle. A denim-like version before Christmas reminded us of the Courir edition, but this cotton canvas edition's a strong look too. In conventional materials we probably wouldn't have given this makeup too much attention, but the Obsidian and ...
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The Jeremy Scott line of revisionist '80's adidas is Kryptonite to purists, but it's a testament to adidas Originals' 2012 output that we can cover these and a faithfully reproduced training shoe that's made in Germany in the same week — there's something for everybody. When the first JS Bear shoe dropped we excitedly fired off emails to adidas requesting them, but we think they thought we were being sarcastic. There's no question that these aren ...
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This Jordan right here is the most hyped Jordan rerelease since the last big re-release. That's not us being flippant about the current wave of AJ popularity, but honestly, every time we see a buzz around a Jordan retro, we assume it can't get any more feverish, but then we get proven wrong. This is the one that the majority seem to have been waiting for and having had some time to get acquainted with the latest iteration ...
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We don't normally do the "closer look" thing once we've featured some footwear. If you've seen it in one shoot you're probably good to go. But then again, not all shoes cost £185. With that in mind we decided to feature the adidas Consortium Made in Germany München again on the build up to its release this Saturday. So what do these special editions have that the inline editions don't? The shoe just feels more ...
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2007 was an odd year. 5 years ago feels like another world and the Nike Air Force 1's 25th anniversary seemed to occur at a transitional time when people were burning out on all-over prints and the exodus to vulc was just commencing. The sheer volume of Air Forces that dropped that year managed to leave us with a certain indigestion for bulky basketball shoes — no sooner did we grab one makeup, then another 5 turned up. Bar honourable ...
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At Crooked we're down to spotlight any UK-based developments. After all, we as a nation are the kings of this collaborarations, right? Look at Hanon's fiery Gel Lyte III — that was a killer shoe, but what happens when the remit moves to include a less obvious choice of partner shoe? Footpatrol have been getting on their collaborative grind after a slow start when the store reopened, but the adidas Campus 80s, Fila Trailblazers (a shoe that's a ...
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10feb 12
All systems are go. We've got the Kobe VI System and now we get the Air Jordan 2012 Deluxe set, offering a semi-bespoke basketball experience. We genuinely don't know how to feel about these interchangeable releases — the Choose Your Own Adventure books of the sports footwear world - and what they bring to the table. In terms of performance, there's no negative in offering the very best, but it's fiddly...very fiddly. The Jordan XX1's switchable ...
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08feb 12
More Air Jordan retros? And so close to the launch of the Air Jordan IV White/Cements? Madness. But we hope this colourway of the Jordan X isn't lost in the stampede like some decent new makeups can be (the Orion Blue's material choices were the nail in the coffin for that VII last year). It's a big, big year for Jordan Brand — the anticipation for the 18th's speckled offerings (available right here that Saturday) is ...
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People have been calling the Nike Foamposite One a moonboot since it debuted in 1997. When we first clocked a pair of Penny's shoes in a late 1990's issue of 'The Source' complete with the 1-800-432-3061 number, we assumed these had dropped from space. They were just there. In their purest One form, they even ditched a hefty swoosh in favour of a tiny white spot of forefoot branding. What was Nike smoking? In the flesh, if you ...
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It's hard to believe that Nike was once a small company, dwarfed by their German rivals and reliant on some ground-level guerilla tactics when it came to marketing that sound crude by today's standards, where strategy after strategy sits in place to keep Nike Inc on top. Geoff Hollister, who passed away yesterday, saw the brand develop from distribution and consultancy at grass roots level to something significantly bigger, with a crucial role that saw him operating as ...
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At Crooked Tongues we're prone to padding out News pieces from a mix of habit and obsessive compulsive disorder. We were doing it a long time before some fellow in a Superdry t-shirt came into the office and told us that it was good, because it's content creation and content creation is apparently awesome. That's fifty or so words already, and we haven't even used the words adidas Originals or Superstar 80s yet. We honestly believe ...
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The adidas Baltic Cup is one of those adidas Originals reintroductions that you don't see coming. Now known as the BC, we first saw the Baltic Cup in the Consortium Tabula Rasa pack that offered some significant reissues and alterations despite that unassumingly blank facade. And you knew that lead to more colourways, didn't you? But like last year's ZX 380 drops, the BC has been treated with a certain reverence. adidas Originals are aware that these ...
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01feb 12
These aren't usually our kind of thing. The office is split on the Zoom Toki's appeal, and we'd kind of like to see the Sabaku pushed again, with its casual mix of Blazer and Chukka, or a campaign built around the Outbreak (we remember a retro hitting the sale racks a few years back). But the Manor is actually a decent shoe when it's given the premium treatment. We had an inline sample floating around for ...
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If the adidas Consortium München is shaping up to be wildly out of your price point, these inline editions that are set for a March release still bring out the best in the shoe. For a while, a couple of these colourways were strictly a size? exclusive, and we flipped out over the green and white variations that are some of the best Münchens to date. Next month they arrive in the store. The chunk of that PU sole that ...
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