crooked tongues magazine News Features

Remember 2006, when we all wore zip up hooded sweatshirts festooned with guns, and Nike dropped a ton of Air Max hybrids? Yeah, we're not that nostalgic about that moment in time either. But that doesn't mean we don't mess with hybrids sometimes - remember when the Nike Air Max 90, Talaria and Humara had a baby? That was a sleeper shoe that really worked. And dipping through the Nike archives, we've seen prototype Air Max BWs with 180 units. Lest we forget, the Air Max 1 upper sat atop an Air Max 90 sole unit for a limited time in the early 1990s too. But anyway, less of the justifications as to why hybrids aren't always an excuse to break out the flaming E-torches and taking it to comments sections — the Nike Air Max 1 2013 QS isn't nearly as terrible as the name suggests. With a USATF (USA Track & Field) theme, that brown colourway is applied to a Hyperfuse Air Max upper that opts to outline some familiar panels rather than replicate them, leading us to get a little disorientated.

We think the Desert colour is supposed to represent gold, which is good, because this shoe in gold would look like something Noddy Holder would bust out circa 1973. The perforated leather lining, and black woven nylon tongue, ENDURANCE, SPEED, FORTITUDE and VICTORY on the sockliner (which also happens to be the creed of CT that we yell at the start of each working day) and 'USATF' and '87' printed on the heels, the shoe looks like some Foot Locker Limited Edition colourway from back in the day, if somebody had taken some blog screengrabs back in a time machine to 1991. The Air Max 2013 sole is a fishtank of an air unit, but with its ability to flex and the traction of the Waffle Skin outsole, we can testify from repeat wears that it's significantly more comfortable than the 360 Max unit ever was. We've given up trying to see the reason behind releases like this and it's definitely a Quickstrike that comes off better than we thought it would be — they're in the Crooked Tongues store right now and there's an Air Max 97 2013 USATF ready for a release at some point soon too.