Sneaker Freak

So I heard the “Sneaker Street” in HK is gonna be wiped out soon, for the urban renewal and development authorities think that the buildings on this street are way too old to stay any longer. And apparently, there are tons of residents in these deteriorating, pre-WWII buildings on the street who are mainly the lower-class old folks waiting to move out with the compensation of a flat in one of those new West Kowloon public estates.

The sneaker street – or rather, a strip coz it spans two blocks straight – is a world-famous street in Mong Kok, Kowloon, which happens to be the busiest town in HK as well. Its history dates back about 15-20 years ago when a bunch of Chinese sporting goods businessmen decided that the rent here was good for them to expand their sneaker business. In fact, the boom of the sneaker shops on this street goes along with the success of the big sports brands, aka Nike, Adidas and Reebok. Particularly important was Nike, which basically dominated the sports business from mid 80’s to 90’s with its Jordan series and numerous other basketball shoes. And the result of this is obvious: with its mass-appealing products and ad’s, the Nike basketball business plans have cultured a pool of basketball kids and teens who believe that basketball is the game of life and support the ever growing sales of sports shoes/sneakers, which in turn has created a culture that is even more deeply influenced by the sports ad’s. And all these could not have happened without the sneaker street. Not only because it’s the only two-block strip in HK –and possibly the world – with almost exclusively sneaker stores, but also it forms the perfect space of advertisements for consumers. Once you walk into this strip, you find yourself immersed in a sea of ad’s: the posters in the store, the products on display, and the huge-ass photos of sports celebrities. And once you hit the heart of the strip, which is the cross road in between the two blocks, this visual bombardment peaks and there is no way you will not see one of these ad’s – or bump into someone’s shoulder because there are like 200 people all trying to cross this tiny street at the same time, and all got the eyes looking at some ad’s but not you.

So we have, again, a classic example of from branding of a corporation to branding of a sports to branding a culture to pushing the sales and exponential growth of corp. But what’s interesting here is that the culture here is not just about the sales, or the kicks that the kids wear, but it has created a specific space that belongs to a community. It’s physically the ultimate consumers’ paradise (well, I guess like the rest of Hong Kong) with a strong cultural motivation behind it as the driving force. And I guess this is pretty obvious, even though I’m not in cultural studies myself.

Because in Hong Kong, most streets are pretty crowded and busy, the buildings on the two sides of a street, though they could be just 5-6 storeys tall in the case of the sneaker street, are literally wrapping around the street like two walls, leaving only a narrow strip on ground with the vertical space above partly covered, either by the buildings themselves or the smog. So most advertisements will be put on walls of the buildings at the level of the first or at most the second floor, but not any higher. In fact they can’t go higher than that, because there are people living from third floor up and they need their air. But trust me, these ads are packed enough: if you are there during the day, you feel like you are walking in a maze; at night, with all the spot lights shinning on the ad’s that wrap around the whole freaking building, you start to wonder if you on the street or in the stadium waiting to kick off a game with these sports stars.

I will certainly feel bad if this street is gone, for it’s my favorite place in Hong Kong since I was like, 5 years old when my dad brought me there to shop for my first pair of “kicks” (L.A. gear, man, y’naw’m’sayin’?). Then all through middle school and high school I would go there like every other week, just to check out the kicks that I wanna get with my savings. In fact, I think a few generations of b-ballers in HK have shopped or at least walked there. It’s so significant that I have seen tourists these years walking around in Mong Kok with a map trying to find this treasure strip. Even if a new mall is built on this site, once the street and its stores are wiped out, nothing will ever be the same.

But I feel sorry for the residents. Damn sorry. Imagine all these years they have put up with the shoppers, the traffics, the noise, the dust, the garage and poor hygiene, and the heat of the lime light out of their windows. You might ask why they don’t move out. Well, I don’t think they have a choice – not when they are retired elderlies with the flat as their only possession, or a family of four with just enough income to support the kids’ tuition and books. And I feel ashamed of myself because I have been their numerous times and yet, I never knew the real problems of the situation for these people – I just dip my head into the pleasure of consumerism and stop thinking once the money slip out of my wallet for the kicks. So when a piece of news comes up reporting how bad the living situation is for these people there, I feel used, exploited, victimized: for all I have seen is the surface of the so-called prosperity in Hong Kong, coated with attractive consumer product, underneath which lies the real situation on the streets of this city, with the real people who are probably working hard everyday but can’t even afford to move out or buy a pair of shoes in the stores downstairs to where they live. So happy as the shoppers shop, some people upstairs are suffering, not just from the intolerable physical condition itself but also the hard, poor life they are going through – and that’s the irony of reality. This is where we live, a capitalistic, profit-driven society consisting of a machine that put some people to the edge of their living. What’s even worse is that this is only one small place in Hong Kong where you find this ironic juxtaposition of the extremes. They could be found elsewhere as well, but you might have to look for it, because in a city like this they real shit is all covered up in something that we all like to, in fact, want to look at: advertisements. It’s not even a matrix man, it’s just fxxking dominance.

But is there a solution to this? I mean, does it even help if I don’t shop for no Nike’s from now on? Or does it mean I can continue shopping if say, the government or even the big corps put their money back into these communities to improve on what they have? That’s a perpetual consumer’s dilemma – well, mine as a consumer at least. It’s like if you want a cheap pair of good jeans you are exploiting someone in the sweatshops of Bangladesh; if you want a cup of coffee and so happens there is only Starbucks around you, you are feeding a big machine that exploit farmers. If corporations bring out consumerism based on a new, colonization-like strategy, is individual consumer able to resist at all?

Well, without an answer, all I can say that I am at least aware of the scam, although I admit, this is just not good enough. But again, this problem of consumer/culture is seen everywhere in Hong Kong, and not a lot of people seems to have a doubt about it -- now that's a real problem.