Day: June 24, 2023

Dad Brog (#114): Of course she picked the J’s

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Welp, this post didn’t age well: a long time ago, apparently back in 2017, I made a post questioning the existence of Air Jordan shoes, for toddlers.  Like, Air Jordans were developed to be Michael Jordan’s signature line of athletic shoes for when he was in the act of playing basketball, but almost instantly they became anything but athletic shoes to anyone other than MJ or any other basketball players who wanted to be like Mike or were also under contract to Nike.

They became status symbols, reasons why people were killed, eventually becoming acceptable as formal wear and/or a stylish option that could be paired with just about anything at all and be met with an approving nod.  Eventually J’s would be released for women, and much like it was back in like 1988, Jordans were about as popular as they’ve ever been, if not more than they were when they burst onto the scene.

And then I saw a kid that could barely walk, rocking some MJ 12s, and was like wtf, why does a toddler need J’s???

But this was six years ago, and now I have a three-year old enrolled in a hip-hop dance class for the next season of her dance school’s year.  No tap shoes or ballet shoes for this class, it’s about sneakers.  Now I’m probably a little bit more of a sneakerhead than mythical wife is, but she knows that J’s are still the cream of the crop when it comes to stylish sneakers, so naturally she trolls the shit out of my by deliberately steering my daughter into wanting some J’s of her own.

And as much as I didn’t want to plunk down the $60 for a pair of shoes that most likely won’t even be able to fit her by the end of the dance year, the idea of my own kid rocking her own J’s wasn’t entirely undesirable.  Naturally, when Nike opened their Disney vault and basically made every iteration of Air Jordans available and customizable to the Nth degree, the 9-year old in me that loved MJ 1’s got my own pair, and in spite of the price tag, I like the idea of my kid having a pair of her own 1’s, regardless of how absurd it is that there are J’s for toddlers in the first place.

So here we have it, it took some steering from the wife, but the seed was planted in #1’s head, and she picked out the MJ 1’s out of several options that she also picked, and through process of elimination, naturally landed on the J’s as her pick for hip-hop class.

$60 poorer, but at least I’ll have pride of having some matching kicks with my kid, doubly when she outgrows them, and bequeaths them to #2 to where they’ll get a second life.  And if I can take care of them well enough, maybe I’ll sit on them to where I can flip them on like StockX in the future for its original investment in like 15 years.

Straight up Nazis

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the weekend, I gave blood.  Little did I realize that the bloodmobile I was giving blood at, was like a block away from where there was a straight up Nazi demonstration in front of a synagogue.

Like, I don’t really have much reason to posted about this at all, other than to condemn and hope that some very internet-ty consequences come to those straight up Nazis who participated in this demonstration.  I guess there’s a proximity thing that makes me feel like I dodged some sort of metaphorical bullet that makes me feel like addressing it.

But really, straight up Nazis.  I firmly believe that there are tons of actual racists and antisemites, but most of these bigots are smart enough to know to keep their bigotry on the downlow, so that they can, exist in modern civilized society, and not be ostracized for their misguided hatred.

However, what we had here, was an actual group of people, who were unapologetically, full disclosure, no attempt to hide their identity, straight up Nazis.  I’m actually a little bit surprised at it, because even the oft-criticized American public school curriculum teaches us that Nazis are some bad people.

And yet, we have a group of people who are completely at peace with their choice to be sympathizers and willing agitators of such extreme hatred, and I’m just kind of like wow.

Also, there’s an easy connection to make with where this happened and the old controversy of Wolfenstein Elementary AKA East Side Elementary and their once, a-little-too-much-like-the-Nazi-eagle logo, but from what I understand this group is like a traveling group of Nazis that just kind of go around to harass synagogues with their surprising Nazism.

Either way, like I said, I don’t really know why I felt the compulsion to write about this.  I guess it was so flagrant and surprisingly shock value, that I just felt like I should share my two cents about the topic.  Obviously there’s something to be said about even acknowledging it at all which isn’t really helping the greater good, but like I said, with all the open identities there, I hope these shitheads are spread out, identified, and get doxed or lose some jobs, because people like this have no business being able to coexist among more civilized people in this country.