You might have seen them. All Star takkies, the young, urban black man’s most faithful friend since the natives first left the ”homelands” to earn a living in the white man’s city.
This year celebrates 100 years since the American company Converse started making rubber footwear which, in 1917, evolved into the beloved sneaker as we know it.
Unfortunately, they have become for some the ultimate emblem of ghetto rough.
If the common description of a tsotsi is correct — a young black male who, at the slightest provocation, will pull a knife and stab you — then chances are he’ll be wearing a pair of All Stars.
Of course we know that this is a caricature. For, like the term ”magents”, which criminologists will wrongly have us believe means a group of gangsters (instead of just ”guys”), the All Star unfairly wears the tag of being the thug’s footwear of choice.
Sure, the All Star was and remains a favourite with all types, including the staff rider and the pickpocket. But this has more to do with its nimbleness and easy maintenance than its street cred.
That is why those of us who wrapped our feet in All Stars during the toyi-toyi and continue to do so when we choose to wear True Religion jeans know that we are worth more than just being another takkie.
It was All Star that served as a football boot when the economy was low. It did not matter that the makers had basketball in mind. And once washed, they could match up with the best of Sunday’s clothes.
The United States basketball player Chuck Taylor, who lent his name to the famous sneaker in 1923, must have been a real guy’s guy.
It was All Star whose distinctive badge reassured many young men that, in a changing world, some things will always be with us and for us. For fashion styles have come and gone but the All Star has remained as it was in the beginning.
And when times changed in this country and those people who had once looked down on them as ”too ghetto” started expressing themselves in new ways, the humble All Star adapted to their fashion whims without giving up anything.
If shoes could talk, there would be none better to chronicle the story of the urban black male experience from day one than the beloved All Star.
You lovingly shod the ”cheeseboys” (the better-off youngsters whose family could afford cheese sandwiches) with the same lack of judgement with which you clad the feet of the ”clevers” the cheeseboys feared and hated.
Many others have tried to match your style, but the true faithful know you and know where to look for the stitch of authenticity, even when the badge has rubbed off.
It thus hurts when so-called respectable establishments turn away those wearing All Star because they assume they’re tsotsis.
One need only read the Mail & Guardian or any other newspaper to see that the real menaces to society wear highest-quality wool suits and silk ties, but nobody turns them away — it is the humble All Star they worry about. Sies!