When the running boom hit in the early Seventies and I joined that program already in progress, I did what any greenhorn follower of a trend would do. I sought out the brand of running shoes that a real runner, Olympic marathon champion Frank Shorter, was wearing then.
The shoes were Tigers, produced by the Japanese sports company Onitsuka Tiger, founded in 1949. The company is still around, still cranking out shoes, but known since 1977 as Asics. At the time, when the bigger names in athletic footwear were adidas and Puma, Tigers could be found at such locales as the running hotbed of Eugene, Ore., widely distributed at area track meets from the automobile of a former University of Oregon runner named Phil Knight.
That was shortly after Knight and his college coach, Bill Bowerman, had started a franchise known as Blue Ribbon Sports. And after Bowerman, who revolutionized running shoes by using his wife’s waffle iron to produce a more durable, cushioned rubber sole, Blue Ribbon Sports evolved into Nike.
Pretty soon I had a pair of those Waffle trainers. And still do as Nike celebrates its 50th anniversary. (The fact that two-time gold medalist Abebe Bikila had won the 1960 Olympic marathon running barefoot never entered into my decision on how to shod my twinkletoes.)
In a way, it’s a bit of an embarrassment to be investing all these years in a hip product of a multinational corporation that now has an annual revenue of roughly $40 billion. Why contribute to the rich getting richer? Nike long ago settled into a devour-and-conquer mode, the largest supplier of athletic shoes and apparel as well as a major manufacturer of sports equipment; its Swoosh logo is as ubiquitous as Facebook.
According to the New York Times, the Nike behemoth has become “part of the root system that underlies the culture. And not just the sneaker culture….It is part of the movies we watch, the songs we hear, the museums we frequent, the business we do; part of how we think about who we are and how we got here.”
Whoa. Way beyond shoes, beyond a brand, Nike has pulled off the trick of dictating fashion, that dichotomy in which individuality supposedly is about nonconformity—yet being “in style” promotes a sort of standard dress code that, by definition, negates self-expression.
Anybody here old enough to remember the heyday of Chuck Taylor basketball sneakers—the low-cut black beauties that were all the rage in the late 1950s when I was in eighth grade? Logically, a basketball shoe without high-ankle support doesn’t make a lot of sense, but “everybody” wanted to play in low-cut Chuck Taylors then. To proclaim our uniqueness, you see.
In the early days of the running boom, which basically coincided with the Nike invasion, I was covering the Boston Marathon and, during a pre-event gathering, a handful of the race favorites could easily be distinguished from the hoi-polloi—the thousands of everyday joggers—by the top contenders’ non-competitive attire. The most accomplished athletes were dressed in street clothes; the great crowds hopeful of similar legitimacy were styling in sweatsuits and running shoes.
“You can tell the real runners,” said Nina Kuscsik, Boston’s first official women’s champion in 1972, “because they aren’t wearing running shoes.” No need for them to be bragging from soapboxes.
But Nike’s decision-makers realized long ago that they “weren’t just selling sneakers,” as Phil Knight once said; that the company was moving into every aspect of the culture. The company cozied up to sports superstars—most notably Michael Jordan—and to celebrities, playing on a Be Like Mike urge, that universal longing to express one’s singularity by imitating the in-crowd.
Nike outlets—yes, I still patronize them—are peopled by customers who clearly are not athletes, seeking rather to present the right “look.” I happen to avoid wearing Nikes when in civilian clothes and certainly am not interested in being a billboard for the company (as if it needed me). But, honestly, having dabbled in other running shoe brands years ago, I quickly found Nikes to be the most efficient and comfortable. So that I am more a problem than a solution regarding such an almighty juggernaut.
Anyway, there never was a chance that a specific type of shoe could turn me into Frank Shorter.