New Website Aims To Be a Beast For Sneakerheads

Jay Corbin, aka the Sneaker Sensei, has taken his infinite love of sneakers and launched Snkrbst (pr. Sneaker Beast) an online and pop up sneaker lifestyle marketplace for all things sneakers, as a way of giving dedicated sneaker heads an elevated experience. Snkrbst hopes to offer top notch entertainment, a satisfying shopping and buying experience, financial responsibility and education all in the same breath.

Corbin, former Senior Lifestyle Editor of ESPN The Magazine, came up with the concept after noticing a lack of quality sneaker expos and conventions and deciding that something much more cultured and organized was needed. When I spoke with Corbin, he explained that there was a void in the marketplace for a high level sneaker expo, so with Snkrbst, Corbin has created a one stop shop for followers of this culture, capitalizing on a collectible sneaker industry that is an mostly unregulated juggernaut, with millions of dollars changing hands on a daily basis all over the world. By bringing in big brands such as Nike, Brand Jordan, New Balance, Reebok, Under Armour, Puma and Etonic, Snkrbst hopes to raise the bar on traditional sneaker events.

Snkrbst will hit the road with pop up sneaker expos as part of Snkrbst’s #RedTapeTour in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and Atlantic City, after a kick-off event at New York City’s Stage 48 on May 19. Not just expos, the #RedTapeTours will include entertainment as well. Scheduled to perform at the initial NYC show are veteran hip hop heavyweights Kool G Rap and Big Daddy Kane, Joe Budden, Vinny Cha$e and Underachievers. Holding down DJ duties will be folks like Jasmine Solano, DJ Clark Kent and Roxy Cottontail. The event will be hosted by Angela Yee and Nina Sky.

Birthplace Magazine got a chance to speak to Corbin about sneakers, hip hop’s role in sneaker culture and one famous basketball player that changed the sneaker game forever.

How is Snkrbst going to be different from all the other sneaker sites out there?

Well, we went to a lot of different sneaker shows and we saw what they were about, looking at the good things they did there and looking at the bad things. One of the things that we found was missing was organization.  You had these warehouses where it was chaos. When you have chaos like that, you dissuade big companies from coming in and supporting you.  We want big companies to come in. We want this to be palatable and digestible for big business. No free air selling. No kids walking around with sneakers on their head.  One thing we want to do is create an elevated experience for the shopper. When you go to some of the sneaker shows we notice that every other table, some people just have three or four sneakers. We are vetting people that come in, so that their collections are a certain type of standard. We want to make sure that we have all the sneakers that the kids are looking for. Our basic mission is to create an elevated experience through top shelf entertainment, shopping and top shelf digital platform. When we are in those markets, we are going to have the top entertainment from those markets, the top sneaker stores, the top sneaker collectors.  We want to bring you a full-fledged concert, recognizable artists, top notch artists, and that’s why we have a partnership with Def Jam, who’s gonna help supply that. Our digital content will be different.  Aside from the regular stuff like sneaker releases, we want to have a very journalistic view of sneaker culture and tell the back stories that no one else is talking about.

You mentioned financial responsibility. What do you mean by that?

I always talk about the finances of sneakers. If you just go to any site like EBay, there is a lot of money changing hands. I think some of it is because of ignorance.  For instance, perfect example, “Grapes.”  “Grape V’s” are dropping Saturday. It’s a known fact that there are 500,000 pairs being put out, but kids will still line up and they’re still gonna overpay through resellers and stuff like that. You go to EBay and you see what these prices are. You see shoes selling for $1,500 that retail for $150.  If there’s a source to tell them like “Listen kids, there are 500,000 pairs, you going to be able to get yours at retail. Be smart with that money.” Or to tell them, “This sneaker is dropping, but it’s going to drop again this year, so you don’t have to go (wait on line).”  Nobody told anybody out there, “Listen you spend all that money on ‘Corks,’ as soon as you put them on, they’re gonna tear.” So be a little bit more responsible. We gonna do that through educating the kids and telling them to be smarter with their money, what’s a good buy and to set parameters for what you should be paying. There’s no regulatory system. Nothing’s capped. It’s almost like alcohol; a bottle in the store that cost $30 is almost $600 in the club. We will serve as a reference point to give sneaker enthusiasts the information to arm themselves so they make wise shopping decisions.

What about hip hop’s influence on sneaker culture?

Hip hop culture propelled sneaker culture.  Especially MTV. I remember Fresh Prince had dope sneakers. I’m looking at what NWA was wearing.  One of my favorite album covers was a group called Three Times Dope out of Philadelphia who did “The Greatest Man Alive,” and “Funky Dividends.” On their album covers, they got Jordan III’s on, Cement III’s. I remember watching “A Different World” Dwayne Wayne had dope sneakers. I used to watch to see. Hip hop propelled it because hip hop artists wearing these sneakers, it became aspirational because you wanted that lifestyle. Hip hop has a direct correlation to sneaker culture, because hip hop was the transit that pushed that culture. People may not look at it right now, but back in the day when I was coming up, that’s how I found out what was hot.  It was funny because through hip hop artists, there were different hot sneakers for different regions, so through that I was able to understand what you wore if you were in L.A., what you wore if you were down south. Even in New York, the subculture, you could tell who was who, which borough you were from, by your sneakers. Queens? You wore Shell Toes. From Harlem? Uptowns. Brooklyn? You wore Pumas.  That’s how your story was told.

Why are you called the Sneaker Sensei?

A sensei is a master, very educated. I’m more into the backstories of sneakers. When I buy a sneaker or my favorite sneaker there’s some type of emotion that’s kind of attached to it. I don’t buy off of impulse, I buy off of emotion.  I’m always the one to drop knowledge about sneakers. When these kids are talking about “Foams” and stuff like that, I’m telling them first time I saw Foams was Miles Simon and Mike Bibby wearing them in Arizona and that invoked a certain emotion in me, before Penny had them. Huaraches, I seen Duke wear them, I seen Michigan wear them. The Fab Five were my idols. I was a Syracuse fan, but the Fab Five turned me against that because the Fab Five evoked the same feeling that Public Enemy did to me musically. The Fab Five were rebellious, so that’s why the Air Sensation is one of my favorite shoes, the Air Unlimited, the black on black Huaraches, the black socks. I was wearing church socks. At the time they came out, Nike didn’t sell black socks. So these are all emotions. One thing that today’s kid doesn’t understand is the back stories. You don’t even know what you are buying.

Michael Jordan changed the way we looked at sneakers. When Michael Jordan came in the league, remember Converse was riding high off the Weapon and Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. But I think Michael Jordan was the first athlete to get a sneaker that people had to have. He was young. When all of those other basketball players were older, Michael Jordan ushered change.

You spoke of top notch entertainment.  Tell me about the #RedTapeTour show on May 19^th

To launch our tour we got Vinny Cha$e, The Underachievers, we got Joe Budden to represent the new school to the old school, because sneaker culture is the same way. We have Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane. I feel that sneaker culture is one of the few cultures that a father and son can share right now. It’s a bond, because the father remembers when these came out and the son is standing in line for these, so why not represent that too on a musical side.

Snkrbst’s #RedTapeTour kicks off May 19 at Stage 48 in Manhattan. For more on Snkrbst and the #RedTapeTour, visit www.snkrbst.com