Now the Adidas I possess for one man is rare
myself homeboy got 50 pair
got blue and black ?cause I like to chill
and yellow and green when it?s time to get ill
got a pair that I wear when I?m playin? ball
with the heel inside make me 10 feet tall
my Adidas only bring good news
and they are not used as selling shoes
?Run DMC, ?My Adidas?

BACK in the day, we used to call them ?rubber shoes,? so generic that we didn?t bother with brand distinctions. No long online forum arguments about Edwardsons vs. Spartans. No online forums, period.

Everyone had a pair for PE, and for those rainy days when we didn?t want to soak our good (leather) shoes.

That was about it.

Then one day, a package from the States. I slipped my feet into a pair of Adidas Stan Smiths.

Whoa!

The label said ?Made in Germany.?

And the uppers were made of pristine white leather.

These were no ?rubber shoes.?

These were something else.

I strutted around with them like John Travolta from the paint store in ?Saturday Night Fever.?

I began noticing what the cool kids were wearing.

Most had three stripes: Adidas shell-toed Superstars were the coolest. But others had the curved Puma stripe, while old school dudes stuck to canvas Converse All-Stars. We used to laugh at K-Swiss because they had five stripes, but eventually they became cool too.

Unlike ?rubber shoes,? these kicks were hard to get. Unless you had overseas connections, you had to go to ?PX? stores to find them, and good luck finding one in your size.

That only added to the mystique, the ineffable cool.

When Rubber World started making Adidas locally in the late ?70s and sneakers became mainstream wear, old school aficionados still chased the high of sporting an exclusive pair of kicks.

When the first running boom kicked off, they took to Nike LDVs and Runners, New Balance, Brooks, Saucony and an obscure British brand called Reebok with its incredibly baroque Aztec. But for street wear, Adidas and Puma still ruled. Many an old geezer wept tears of joy when Puma decided to reissue the iconic Clydes (well, okay, that was me?).

Then in 1986, Run DMC came out with their hit ?My Adidas,? and it all came together in a tasty stew of hip-hop culture, street fashion and good old-fashioned capitalist consumerism. The shoe companies finally caught on and jumped into the trend big time. They began to market special limited editions and collaborated with celebrity athletes and artists on exclusive designs. This began to feed an increasingly voracious sub-culture of sneaker collectors.

Fast forward to the present, and the cult of the sneaker is stronger than ever. Known as ?sneakerheads? or ?sneaker freakers,? people who collect sneakers are no longer oddballs, but simply people pursuing a private passion, some perhaps to an extreme.

In the Philippines, Imelda may still get the props, but local sneaker collections numbering in the thousands of pairs and amounting to millions of pesos are not unheard of.

One indicator of the size and strength of the local sneaker subculture is the emergence of a glossy magazine dedicated entirely to sneakers.

Ms. Clavel stands for ?Most Sneakerheads Consider Living A Very Exclusive Lifestyle.? According to its advertising information, it caters to a ?niche demographic, with a focus on high-end streetwear and high-end sneakers. We have a market that is 13-45 years of age, 60 per cent male and 40 per cent female, who aspire to have an exclusive lifestyle, or people who already live a very exclusive one.?

According to sneaker maven Edouard Canlas, 31, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Ms. Clavel, the local sneaker scene took off from the Filipinos? love for basketball, and for many local sneakerheads, the first iconic shoes were Nike Airs?Air Jordans, Air Maxs, and Air Force 1s.

?If you had a pair of Air Force 1s then, sikat na sikat ka na (you became popular),? recalls Canlas, himself a sneakerhead with a collection numbering nearly 1,000 pairs, including an ultra-rare, one-of-a-kind, $6,500 pair?yes, that?s US dollars?of Nike ?Paris? Dunks.

Eventually, he says, local collectors and shoe companies started holding sneaker events, such as model launches, small exclusive parties, and collaborations with artists and designers where custom editions and models were created expressly for collectors.

?There are many different kinds of collectors,? he says. ?Some are what we call purists?they only collect a certain model, for instance Nike Air Jordans. They?ll try to acquire all the different editions of the Air Jordan, in all the various colorways. Others are more diverse, with individual preferences.?

Many collectors buy at least two pairs of each model?one to wear, and another to ?keep on ice,? i.e. to store in mint condition. Some just keep their shoes in their original boxes, but other collectors build elaborate rooms with custom storage systems to display and preserve their shoes. Most of these appear to non-sneakerheads to be what they are?temperature and humidity-controlled shrines to their owner?s strange devotion to their consuming passion.

There are celebrity sneakerheads. Actors Dennis Trillo and Mark Herras are said to have sizeable collections, as did the late Francis M and the members of the band Chicosci. But the biggest collectors prefer to remain in anonymity, known only by their online code names to the online sneakerhead community. For instance, there is the legendary Six Million Peso Man?so named because that?s how much he spent on sneakers over a couple of years. Big Boy and Bossing are other famous collectors with jaw-dropping hoards.

While he himself is partial to Air Jordans, Air Maxs, Air Force 1s and Dunks, Canlas also collects New Balance and Asics Gel running shoes, and the odd pair that piques his interest, such as a near-mint 1958 vintage pair of Chuck Taylors, which he got from an online seller from Japan.

Another indication of local sneaker culture?s energy and purchasing power is the emergence of the independent sneaker store, says Canlas. In the last couple of years alone, he adds, various independent shoe stores such Bunker (owned by model Borgy Manotoc, himself an avid sneakerhead?wonder where he gets it from?), the Commune, the Ronac Art Center in Ortigas and The Cubao Expo have emerged to cater to sneaker aficionados whose needs are not being met by the mainstream shoe stores. Canlas himself owns Second Wind, an independent store catering mostly to runners and triathletes.

The original idea for Ms. Clavel was a simple ?look book,? a guide to notable new sneaker releases, spiced up with articles on collectors, street fashion and music reviews. But given that the majority of sneakerheads are young men, they decided to include a little cheesecake as well?man does not live by sneakers alone, after all. ?