Close Your Eyes And Watch Adidas’ “Sportive” Vid

Is it art? Well, it’s currently being exhibited at the Today Art Museum in Beijing and the Cité des Sciences in Paris, so some people think it is. What I know about art—to paraphrase many including the great Tom Waits—could fit inside a thimble and there’d still be room for you and me. What I do know is that sports are filled with cool sounds. And those sounds provide the soundtrack for this three-minute video—only a heartbeat has been added as a back beat. Being a hockey player/fan, my favorite sports sound is the booming crack of a 100mph slapshot, which disappointingly is not including here (the hockey sound is a goalie skating across his crease.). But play the video twice, the second time with eyes shut. All the clips are from the Adidas archive. It’s certainly closer to art than Nike’s much-touted (I say ‘pedestrian’) Olympics commercial.

Fixed Gear Fever Continues To Spread

There’s no slowing up the fixed gear phenomena. Footwear giant adidas swerved into the race with this 2007 Marinoni Pista Crono one-off featuring the brand’s iconic triple stripe pattern. It was created as a special project between the sneaker company and bike builder Marinoni. It’s the only one of it’s kind, and the 56cm track bike is being auctioned off on eBay, with all proceeds benefiting the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada. If this feels a little too branded and you’re not feeling particularly philanthropic, here’s basically the same model, but an ‘08 without the footwear markings. |HighSnobiety|

Sneaker Brands Look To China For Inspiration, Tibetans Not So Much

In the wake of all the protests that are taking place in Tibet, Nike and adidas can’t be too happy with the timing of this Wall Street Journal article describing how the footwear giants are looking to China for inspiration. Both sneaker bigs plan on creating gear and footwear that emphasizes Chinese cultural design elements which most likely will not include Tiananmen tanks or club beaten monks. With the Beijing Olympics just around the corner, there’s tremendous opportunities for the brands, both of which are planning to release products to coincide with the games in August. Despite a few hundred shot and condemnations by the Dalai Lama, the Chinese announced the torch will still pass through Tibet. But if the notorious human rights-violating country keeps up their offensive who’s gonna be left holding it? |WSG via Complex|
Nike Court Force High inspired by 1984 Chinese Olympic gold medalist Lang Ping. (Click image to enlarge)

adidas’ Graffiti Covered Subway Car Rather Unremarkable

Just when you thought that adidas and Foot Locker’s ‘End to End’ graffiti-inspired sneaker line totally sucked, they one-up themselves and do a promotion that is equally or even more sucky than the kicks themselves.
Update: It just got exponentially worse when we saw a close up of this disclaimer.

Sneakers, Graffiti and Controversy North of Houston |Gothamist|

Survival of the Hippest: Kanye West Doesn’t Care About Straight People

If keeping up with all the new sneakers, Japanese toys, prints, and limited edition crap out there has become nearly impossible, welcome to Survival of the Hippest. It’s the all purpose dump for the stuff you may never end up buying, always question it’s purpose, but still find intriguing.
After the jump we continue to trend-hunt and cool-gather all the items that are sure to make you all the talk of Max Fish.

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