crooked tongues magazine News Features

The adidas ObyO DB line is tough to pin down. It seems to be based on the principle of remixing shoes to a point that isn't heretical, but the sheer variety is mind-boggling — we've seen primary coloured Torsions, mid cut Forest Hills and hybrids that homage the legendary Field Boot in its "Beef & Broccoli" form. In comparison, this season's Beckham and Bond take on the Grand Prix is very sober indeed. The Grand Prix's appeal is ...

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Has it been that long? Not since the last Clyde in a quintessentially Clyde colourway, because that was like, last week or something, but has it really been a decade since Undefeated came to be? Damn. Happy birthday to the west coast's finest. We attribute the power of UNDFTD to the emphasis on athletics, expertise in retail — a realm where many crumble, and some excellent art direction. We're anticipating a whole rollout of anniversary items throughout the year ...

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The David Beckham and James Bond offerings for adidas Originals' ObyO line have far, far, far exceeded any of our expectations. In the beginning, we expected them to be terrible. Then we saw potential. Now we look forward to seeing the new output. This season's pieces are particularly good — particularly the Grand Prixs, but we were attracted to this ClimaCool creation too. In the office, we think the 2002 ClimaCool is an overlooked design — with more of a top ...

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We won't lie. Some kind of weird virus has decimated the office population. Before they all run amok like the murderous unfortunates of '28 Days Later' we thought we'd cover the only thing we had pictures of today — the Nike Free 4.0 V2 in a women's colourway. And yes, it's a lot like the Free Run+ 3 that we covered a few days ago, with a few significant changes. This year Nike are really working ...

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The Kamikaze has a tendency to instigate some extreme reactions. In its original early '90's form, the Kamikaze was no shrinking violet, making sure that Shawn Kemp's feet stayed noticable on the court and was the subject of many Source ads in its day. With Swizz Beatz as the endorsee in 2012, the Kamikaze III is part of a new breed of Twitter-led hype for the brand. Sure, it's not a Swizz design per se, fitting into ...

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Every year we see a themed New Balance 576 pack straight out of Flimby. They don't necessarily need to be making concept driven shoes, because neutral and eye catching suedes can do the communications for them. They say it best when they say nothing at all, but after the fine Pub Pack there was a Lake District set that we can't remember too well, but this duo of makeups seems made for an international market who seem to ...

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It's one thing to get all excited over the shinier end of the sneaker spectrum, but there's plenty of mileage in a good pair of trainers that are hype free. That's not to say that Le Coq Sportif's current heritage output like the Eclat doesn't deserve equal amounts of coverage to whatever's got people going ham but it's a quieter breed of shoe release, and one that's all the better for it ...

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Wow. We never thought we'd see the day when the Jordan X would fly from the Crooked Tongues store, but we're glad to see its popularity ascend like a leap from the shoe's namesake. For years we had a couple of OG pairs in the store's inventory, gathering dust, but something happened over the last 12 months...we don't know if it was the free global shipping or escalating globalisation of sports footwear (it's ...

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So by now, everybody should've been contacted if they're UK-heads who wanted to buy a pair of Galaxy Foamposites and their names were drawn or if they're Facebook winners. The hype has escalated on these shoes to outright footwear psychosis and the comments thread for the competition News entry was highly entertaining. Out in the real world, things have been equally eccentric, but a lot more civil. Shouts to those who've been camping outside the Oxford ...

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The Nike Free Run series is officially a trilogy now. The Free Run 2 is easily the greatest Nike runner of the last five years and possibly the greatest vessel for the Free system's tactically placed siping. When Free was introduced in 2004, Coach Bowerman wasn't around to give it the nod, but the Nike Running team took it to his old associates for a sign-off of sorts from athletics' old guard and they got it. Bill's ...

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Nothing represents what we like most from the industry like the Nike Footscape does. The Footscape's reappropriation at the hands of fanatics, taking Nike's 1995 breakthrough runner, with the foot shape and asymmetric lacing, and making it a must-have with an audience who had no intention of breaking a sweat in them was a pivotal moment. Duffer buying stock from sports shops and marking them up to £100+? A golden era. Just like the Rift from the same ...

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The longboard can be the plague of parks and streets. They're skateboards for Superdry kids. But we like the idea of electric skateboards for all kinds of hi jinks. A remotely controlled board has possibilities for spectacular accidents, idiotic behaviour and lazy modes of transport and our friends at Parlophone have kindly given us an Eight Ball Cruiser II electric skateboard to give away to one lucky winner to commemorate the launch of Chiddy Bang's 'Breakfast' album. You ...

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The New Balance MT580 is the Kasper Hauser of NB shoes — it just appeared at some point in Tokyo's mita. There was the standard running 580 in the vaults (of which little info seems to exist), but this one, bearing the MT prefix, that can somehow capture a mountain abbreviation (frequently applied to offroad remixes of the brand's styles) as well as evoking the mita name. It really is a mystery model — we're not talking fake ones ...

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Gourmet's designs can sometimes be uncompromising, but we defy you not to at least appreciate the Dignan's design. Us? We love this one. Once upon a time, shoes didn't pay too much attention to feedback...they were just there, like a "f*ck you, this is what sneakers look like now." We kind of liked that. Now it's all retweets and feedback. Some of the great sneaker designs appeared that way, alongside some stinkers too, but ...

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Sometimes Nike's casual offerings don't grab us like the performance stuff does. What can we say? We've long been fans of athletic product that's reappropriated rather than what's actually aimed at the lazy. The Nike Sportswear Roshe Run is a pleasant break from the norm though — we've never been able to make ourselves like the Royal and we struggle with the Toki, but the sales of those two indicate that we're in the ...

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Sometimes there's a shoe release that divides the office and the Nike Sportswear Huarache Free has been that model. Some like it at face value — younger staffers who aren't mired in history like the colours and grooved soles. Then there's those of us who — as with the Kukini Free — feel that the original sole unit is 50% of the shoe's appeal. We love Huaraches for being the progressive street shoe of choice for multiple generations, whether ...

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The Nike Kukini is a very Crooked Tongues shoe. Remember the old Spine Magazine feature from 2000? Pieces like that were the thing that spawned this site. Before the preoccupation with retro, the Alpha Project releases like the Seismic and Kukini (Hawaiian for a "swift messenger") were as progressive as it gets, and a concerted effort to start a new century in style. This shoe was, and still is, genuinely strange — there's an HR Giger-esque biomechanic feel to it ...

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There's not enough UK events for the sports footwear loving community for our liking, so salutes to those who make the effort. We hope that the Crepe City team are prepping a remix to Tyga's 'Rack City' with a customised crepe chorus to commemorate their next event — we've watched this London-based sneaker event grow from a stall to something significantly more substantial, and it's back this Sunday for a fifth outing. Social media and forums are ...

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