Not just any shoes

Saturday, April 21, 2007 | 7:09 a.m.

The people at the front of the line had arrived a day and a half before the new Air Jordans were due to land.

About 40 girls and guys, sweat-suited, with the we're-all-in-the-same-fly-club-look lined a concrete wall Friday, waiting for the moment .

The rules had come across the street wire. Even a Niketown employee said the kids find out from one another, so there's no need to ask us.

Although this sort of thing occurs under the noses of the unsuspecting public with some frequency, the limited release of Air Jordans scheduled for today will be only the second two-pack in 23 years. The two pairs - $200 for both - are a reprise of the first-ever model, not seen since 1985, according to collector London Schneider.

Schneider, moderator of a Web site devoted to Jordan freaks around the world, was not in the line in an alley beside Caesars Palace.

He had a secret plan for getting his, at another one of the half-dozen stores in the Las Vegas Valley set to drop the shoes on the people today.

The whole thing - the buzz, the wait, the secrets, the money, the gotta-get-it-now - has been put under the magnifying lens of pundits and academics for years, almost every time kids skip classes in masses to buy the latest, or someone robs someone, all for a pair of sneakers.

Dave Sheehan, a Clark County School District spokesman, said Desert Pines and Rancho high schools and Mannion Middle School reported up to half the student body missing Friday, and two regions - the east and southeast - had high absenteeism.

At the same time, he couldn't say why that was, because Friday was also the anniversary of Columbine, and then there was that 420 thing that an English teacher at Las Vegas High School mentioned - you know, the code word for marijuana. At the very least, Air Jordan truants had cover, what with all the other kids skipping.

Beside Caesars, a group of six high school students had been online since between 7 and 10 in the morning.

Others had missed work.

Chris Spinella, decked in a floppy Air Jordan T-shirt, hit the line as soon as he clocked out from work at Bank of America. The 20-year-old has collected the sneakers half his life, more than 150 pairs.

Why?

"It's life," he explained.

This is when you begin to hear the voices in your head, from people like Velma LaPoint, a professor of child development at Howard University and a steering committee member for a project called the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.

She thinks young people develop a "sneaker addiction ... (as) companies promote an image, a way to fit in with the hip crowd."

"They're priming youth to consume more ... It's an insatiable desire for goods at the expense of other things, like education ... or investing the money in something," she said.

Then there's the crime, she said.

For the past week alone, a Google search throws up reports of a 20-year-old shooting someone for his Air Jordans in Buffalo, N.Y.; another guy stealing 160 pairs in Charlotte, N.C.; and a pair of thieves hitting a store for two pairs in Hampton, Va.

LaPoint says this owes to pressure to acquire the look.

"It's like, 'If I can't look a certain way on my own, I'll do whatever necessary to get the look,' " she said.

Spinella thinks these things happen because parents let them happen.

"Parents aren't regulating enough," he said, adding that he "never took it to an extreme" as a kid.

"Kids are getting $300 shoes , but they're not getting A's in math," he added.

Mico Velasco, standing nearby, said the crime is because of people "not getting theirs. Once you have it, everything's cool. It's the getting it part."

A sentence is cut off when a few dozen feet shuffle into the street, someone screams, fists bash into a face.

Within minutes, blood runs at their feet, and casino security, police, Nike tag-wearing officials and an ambulance fill the narrow street.

"We're just here for the shoes," a skinny kid scolds. "This is not the time and place for that ."

Voices say it was about a girl, or maybe someone cut the line, or it started the last time they were in line some months ago.

People with loud voices and those Nike tags - handing out wristbands, the ticket to buying the Jordans when the store opens at 10 this morning - announce that the moment ha s arrived, hours before planned.

The line soon vanishe s.

Velasco sports a band and sums up what it's all about :

"You're gonna do what you gotta do for what you love . And kids love sneakers."