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The Vans Mid Skool 77 is an underrated silhouette that never seemed to exist for very long when it appeared as the mid-way #37 to the more famous Old Skool's style #36 in 1977 and 1978's style #38 — the Sk8-Hi. It's actually one of the very best Vans models - we certainly prefer it to the SK8-Mid (our man Henry at The Other Side of the Pillow actually put us right on the SK8-Mid — it was a shoe that existed back in the day, even though we thought it was a brand new Vans faux-heritage release). We only realised that the Mid Skool was an archive model rather than a newly introduced Blazer-alike when (as far as we can remember) Vans put out a special edition for 'Dogtown and Z-Boys' and we spotted it in some French collections of US-made deadstock. Its appearance in the old ad that led to Classic Kicks resurrecting it (one of our favourite Vans collaborations ever) and imagery of Tony Alva, a SK8-Hi and Blazer man, wearing this curious mid-cut made it a shoe we actively hunted down. The Mid Skool has gone on to become one of our favourites to wear with shorts and we're surprised that it never made much noise at the time — maybe an ankle height was 12-13 years ahead of its time; a street skating shoe that appeared during the golden age of vert. These Vans California editions take it back to the days when Vans fully acknowledged their skate audience in the late 1970s with the Off the Wall campaigns with some premium suede uppers, leather on the jazz stripes and canvas on the tongue. Both shoes are available in the Crooked Tongues store right now.