WHAT HAPPENED TO THE NIKE AIR YEEZY 2 ‘RED OCTOBER’? Here we stand on November 1, October gone, and still there’s no sign of a red Nike Air Yeezy 2 release. An October drop was a sure bet, right? Yeezus implied it himself in song! Mystery surrounds this magical sneaker, we still hold out hope for a general release, but let’s pause for a moment to recap how this year’s hypothetical Yeezy release had us all seeing red – out of lust, embarrassment and anger… The red version was first spotted way back in May on Kim Kardashian’s Instagram, along with a draft cover for West’s new album, Yeezus. Then Kanye himself wore the retina-grabbing pair on Saturday Night Live, as well as just about every live show he did throughout the year. Unlike the original two colourways of the Yeezy 2, these didn’t pop up on the feet of other celebrities – not Pusha T or Jay Z and definitely not Pete Wentz. Fat Joe even said Kanye told him straight up he couldn’t get him a pair. Nike was going super exclusive and that fed the hungry hype machine. Then there were the tweets from Nike PR director Heidi Burgett. Dispelling rumours that the Red Yeezy would drop in concert with the release of Yeezus in June, she said Nike was, ‘Planning to release it later in the year’. The sneakerworld was on red alert – a release date was surely imminent. Soon after, Kanye’s confidant and snakeskin snapback supremo Don C fuelled the beast on his Instagram, posting a blank image with hashtags #airyeezy2 and #redoctobers. Curiouser and curiouser. When Yeezus dropped, heads immediately treated the ‘Yeezys all on your sofa/These the red Octobers’ line from ‘Hold My Liquor’ as gospel – the red Nike Air Yeezy 2 was definitely coming in October. Kanye then announced on his website that 50 lucky people would be gifted a pair, and all they had to do was decode a kinda confusing and arduous multi-stage entry process. One option even involved entering a CD-Rom in your computer – ooh, old school Kanye! Comp winners were announced and if you didn’t know the address of anyone who won, you put a big red circle around October on your calendar. But then October came round and… nothing! No lotteries announced, no police crews appointed to control the ruckus at shoe spots and no word from Nike. The only thing close we got was ol’ Kimmy K showing off her own pair asking the masses, ‘What should I do with these?’ What a tease! Kanye, how could you be so heartless? Was this all an elaborate hoax just to have us think you were gifting us with a new shoe when really you’d just planned to give a custom pair to your girl before you proposed to her inside a baseball stadium you rented out? Did you just want even more attention for your gesture of love and absurd money dumping? Have you forgotten we are suffering out on the streets in our Jordans and Air Max and all we want are some two thousand dollar shoes to keep our feet warm? Surely not. We haven’t given up yet, we never will. Kanye’s been late to things before – almost every time he plays a festival he starts a couple of hours after he should, so we know there’s still hope for a show of the red glow. But are we all hyped out? Maybe, but I guarantee there still won’t be enough of these prize pieces to go around if they do come out. So let’s just relax, because blessed are the meek, just pray to Yeezus everyday. ‘Red Decembers’ has a ring to it, doesn’t it? Not really, but we’ll take it. #sneakerfreaker
