Friday, May 15, 2026

Chany Jeanguenin #4.


The Dirt of Luck.

The Swiss all-terrain ripper holds on to avoid floating away. I don't know how much a little helium in the insole would actually reduce the weight of a shoe, but you have to give Converse credit for trying something different. I can't recall ever seeing many Converse in the wild. Were they selling? The shoes look like a big athletic company's attempt at copying the excessively padded skate shoes of the day. I don't think I've seen too many pairs of their current effort either. It seems like a lot of pros and sponsored ams wear them so I imagine they do move enough kicks to keep the skate team going.

We had all the spring weather this week which even necessitated skateboarding in gloves a couple of times. Have a good weekend.

Atiba Jefferson handled the photography.

Transworld - June 2000 Volume 18 Number 6

3 comments:

Justin said...

Did anybody get the reference?

There will probably be posts next week since it is the 18th anniversary of this dumb thing and all, but I'm not sure what. I had something planned until I looked over what I wanted and it wasn't that great or I had used it already.

Anonymous said...

The reference is lost on me I'm afraid. This helium thing perhaps seemed to happen at a point when companies were trying to gain an edge by saying their products were technically superior. I guess there's a long history of these kind of gimmicks - I mean, what was boneite? If you took a board apart there it felt like cardboard. I guess you can't snap or crack cardboard - was that the essence? The helium reminds me though of folk filling their car tyres with nitrogen instead of air (at a cost) as nitrogen molecules are larger and therefore less able to escape. The reason it's not worth the cash? Air is already 80% nitrogen.

Justin said...

It's a total gimmick, which is what marketing is all about. I never had any Converse, but this was the ad I remembered and wanted to use for the week so it worked to some extent. I don't know if that's good or bad.

I'll give it a few more days in case somebody happens to chime on where the Dirt of Luck is from before citing the source.