Mark KennedyView other columns by Mark Kennedy
The other night, I was walking through Northgate Mall with my 9-year-old son when he wandered into Hibbetts Sports.
As the father of two boys, I am familiar with young men answering the siren call of sneaker stores. There's something about the smell of shoe glue that attracts them.
As my son checked out the merchandise, I drifted over to the "wall of shoes." To my surprise some of the most popular styles of 2016 aren't new at all, they're throwback designs from the mid-20th century.
I'm betting today's kids are only vaguely aware that canvas Converse All Stars and three-striped Adidas Superstars are Beatles-era fashions.
Just seeing those shoes on the shelves took me back to the late 1960s and early 1970s when fashionable sneakers were the only status symbols available to lower-middle-class kids like me. If I worked hard and saved my money from mowing lawns, I, too, could own a pair of white Stan Smith tennis shoes with the green Adidas trefoil emblem on the heel.
Back then we called all athletic footwear "tennis shoes," although many were actually basketball shoes. Breathable, lightweight shoes designed for running didn't take over until Nike emerged as a market-share leader in the early 1980s. (Interestingly, Nike now owns the Converse brand.)
During my elementary school years - roughly 1964-1970 - Converse All Stars were king. Graduating from Keds to Converse was a big deal for me in fifth grade. I still remember the joy of unwrapping my first pair of All Stars from Jones & Lang Sporting Goods store in Columbia, Tenn., in about 1969.
Today, trendy teenage girls are wearing the same shoe with its canvas uppers, wide cotton laces and big, round All Star emblem on the side. Smartly, Converse has taken the basic architecture of the All Star and spun it dozens of different ways, using the cloth uppers as an art canvas. The website creativeblog.com observes: "Converse All Stars are ubiquitous among students, skaters, indie kids, punks and primary school children."
From canvas All Stars I graduated to yellow-suede low-tops in junior high. These shoes scream 1972 - to the point they might as well be made from shag carpeting.
By high school, I had become an early adopter of Adidas. I remember wearing an early Adidas t-shirt and listening to friends try to pronounce the name phonetically with the accent of the first syllable: "AH-dee-dahz."
The first Adidas shoes to earn my admiration were all-white, leather Stan Smiths, named after a tennis great of the day. Any baby boomer you see today wearing faded jeans and white leather sneakers can trace the evolution of the look back to Stan Smiths.
But the most welcome blast from the past on today's shoe shelves is the Adidas Superstar, an iconic leather sneaker with a rubber toe cap and three black stripes. Popularized by '80s rappers, the Superstar revival is white hot, with celebrities such as Jay-Z rocking the look.
I've never been one to make nostalgia purchases, but I might need a pair of Adidas Superstars for my birthday later this month. (Is anyone in my family reading this?)
I'm not sure if this 1970s revival will spill over into other areas of pop culture.
Personally, I hope it does.
But I'm drawing the line at Earth shoes and leisure suits.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645. Follow him on Twitter @TFPCOLUMNIST. Subscribe to his Facebook updates at www.facebook.com/mkennedycolumnist.