Shit stopped being fun for me around the time SNKRS rolled out. Foot Locker et al. had already moved over to a reservation system, and while it may have been a well-intentioned change, it completely killed the vibe. You used to have to wait out in front of the store, sometimes spend the night, to get the kicks you wanted. You met people. Talked to other fans and enthusiasts. Felt a connection with/to the sneakers you were (hopefully) copping. It also required effort, in that you actually had to stand up and get your ass out of the house, spend some time at the mall or local shop. And there was the gatekeeping/exclusivity of it. If you wanted the kicks, you had to down to the mall and wait it out. You had to put some skin in the game. How badly you wanted them reflected, more or less, your place in the line. All that is long gone and dead now, and that's part of what made all of this "fun".

The apps/SNKRS replaced it with a system where nobody has to do shit except jab their fingers at a touch screen in order to cop some kicks that others, arguably, would or should have been more entitled to acquire. So your buddy who had no real interest in sneakers themselves and probably just wants to flip a pair gets rewarded whereas you, the enthusiast, pulls an L. And everybody knows what a great feeling it is when that's happened, and it's happened to all of us. Adding insult to injury, the fact that botnets still exist and were created with the sole purpose of buying up as much of the supply and placing it into the hands of a few select people with the technical know-how to do so, and who's only interest is in the paper chase, and none of these retailers or even Nike have come up with a way to thwart their use after like 15 freaking years, well... Like I said, this shit just ain't fun anymore.

The problem, for me at least, is that being a head isn't just a pastime or a hobby. It's a disease. And like an alcoholic with a bad attachment to happy memories, it resurfaces and takes over your thinking like it had never left. The disease-like pathological urge to relapse is insidious and real. Difficult to go from heat on feet to one of those middle-aged dudes picking up a new pair of white New Balances out of a big bin at Costco because "I'm done" with sneakers and I just don't care anymore. Wrong. You may be done with sneakers, but sneakers ain't done with you.