What makes a pair of sneakers ultra exclusive? Innovative customization definitely ups the ante and Boston is starting to see more and more of it. The Boston-based sneaker afficianados, taste-makers, and experts at femalesneakerfiend.com, Concepts, and kicksandchicks.com came together for Sneak[er] Peek at the Paradise Lounge recently, an event celebrating kick culture and the sole fiends who love it. NYC Graff ladies/customizers Pink Eye and Fetti set up their elaborate displays with everything from Adidas to Air Force 1’s. The sneaker art ranged from the elaborate to the understated, Fetti focusing on theme-oriented designs (a Simpsons AFI, for example), and Pink Eye tending more towards the creative side. There’s a wide array of methods and tools used to customize kicks ― fabric burning pens, stenciling, painting, adding material or prints to the shoe, even embroidering ― and the displays featured at least one example of each. Bigs3 Customs was also there representing; with clients like Fat Joe, DJ Khaled, Ne-Yo, and Jim Jones, they don’t need the exposure, they were just there the love of original kick designs.
DJ On&On manned the wheels of steel and some local Beantown hip-hop talent took to the stage, including Ed Rock (aka Ea$y Money), City Slickers, and the Greater Good. DJ Shame (of the Vinyl Reanimators) also did a special set. Local graff writers Rob React, Cayper, and Sender were on the scene doing live tags, keeping it graffilthy with raw style. The crowd? An ecclectic mix of b-boys, b-girls, graff artists, sneaker customizers, sneaker consumers, scenesters, and Beantown’s most thuggish. In other words, sneaker fiends of every shape and size. With the original elements of hip-hop ― emceeing, Djing, graff art, and creativity ― being joined back together, you could see the counterculture moving forward, one customized sole at a time.
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