Day Ones

A line camped out overnight on a New York sidewalk under tarps, waiting for a Sole Collector Niketown release in 2005

An interview series

You were there. Nobody wrote it down.

The line, the board, the back room of the shop. The people who built this before the world was watching.

Niketown New York, 2005

Day Ones is an interview series for the people who lived it.

Not the brands. Not the resellers. The person who slept on concrete in November, the one who ran the trade thread and never shorted anybody, the shop employee who held a pair for a kid she knew was saving. Most of those stories have never been written down anywhere, and the people in them do not think of themselves as worth interviewing. They are wrong about that.

You answer the questions yourself, in your own words, and we publish them close to how you wrote them. Twelve pages, most of them a single question. About twenty minutes if you take your time, and taking your time is the whole point. Send photos if you have them. The crumpled receipt and the bad flash picture are worth more here than anything clean. We read every one of these ourselves, so it is not a queue and it is not a robot.

Two Sole Collector x Nike collaboration sneakers carrying SOLE branding, displayed on top of an orange Sole Collector book under blue light
The shoes and the book, from when both came out of the same place
A dense crowd leaning in with digital cameras raised at the Sole Collector Niketown Seattle event in 2006
Seattle, 2006
Two people shaking hands across the counter inside the Sole Collector Niketown Seattle event in 2006, shot in black and white
The handshake
A packed room of people in winter coats waiting inside the Sole Collector Niketown New York event in 2005
New York, 2005

Tell us your story. Help us keep the archive.

Day Ones

Who you are

For a lot of people this is the name the community actually knows.

A board, a group chat, a shop, a parking lot. Wherever people knew you by it.

However you count it. A range of years, a school, a shoe.

If you were featured in a Sole Collector print issue, tell us which one. An issue number, a cover you remember, or roughly when. We will go find it.

Never published. This is how we reach you about your piece.

Day Ones

The first pair

Day Ones

The room

Boards, group chats, a mall parking lot, a shop that let you hang around. Whatever counted as the room for you.

Day Ones

The day

A release, a camp-out, a trade, a Saturday at the mall. Give us the details, not the summary. What the weather was, who was in line, what you ate.

Day Ones

The collection

Day Ones

The one that got away

Day Ones

Credit

The people who put you on, traded fair, held a pair for you.

Day Ones

Then and now

Day Ones

Where can people find you now?

Just the handle. No link needed.

Yours, your shop, your work. Whatever you would want somebody to click.

Optional, like all of this page. Leave the whole page blank and we publish nothing about where you are.

Day Ones

The photos

Up to six. JPG, PNG or WebP, and we will try to convert iPhone HEIC photos for you. Real photos from back then beat anything clean. Phone photos are large, so sending them can take a minute on a phone signal.

One line per photo, in the order you sent them. This becomes the description a screen reader reads out, so it matters more than it looks like it does.

Names only.

Day Ones

Who else

This never appears in your piece. It is how we find the next person.

Day Ones

Consent

  1. Who you are
  2. The first pair
  3. The room
  4. The day
  5. The collection
  6. The one that got away
  7. Credit
  8. Then and now
  9. Where can people find you now?
  10. The photos
  11. Who else
  12. Consent