They Dress From The Bottom Up: Sneakerheads Converge In D.C.

A line stretches down the hall, up the stairs, and out the door at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. The voice of an event organizer echoes throughout space: "No fakes! We catch you selling fakes, you're getting kicked out!" he warns. "Embarrassment!"

It's Sneaker Con. Organizers say they are expecting about 10,000 people to converge at the convention center over the weekend for this stop of the global tour.

Sneaker Con is exactly what it sounds like.

"Everybody's out here buying sneakers, trading sneakers. Every sneaker you can imagine," describes Tamika Jeter.

She's a stylish Baltimore native wearing a pair of black and white checkered Commes Des Garcon x Nike Cortez Platform sneakers that retail for $390.

It's her first time at Sneaker Con but, a self-proclaimed sneakerhead, Jeter's excited by what she sees. "Exclusives, some [sneakers] that you haven't seen in years," she says. "Everything's here. For the sneaker fan, this is the place to be." She has her eyes out for a good deal on some Yeezy 700s, a collaboration between Adidas and Kanye West.

People come from all over the country to buy, sell, and trade sneakers, at this event. Organizers say that it's one of the few places where people can still physically gather together to talk sneakers. These days more and more people RSVP for new shoes online and wait for a digital drop rather than waiting in lines wrapped around a Footlocker for hours.

The event started in 2009 in New York to celebrate sneaker culture, and has since evolved to include a digital marketplace, an app, and has even developed an authentication process that includes tagging shoes with microchips to indicate that they're real. It helps keep fake shoes out of the marketplace.

Fakes can create problems in a peer-to-peer marketplace like this. Organizers say that's just part of what happens when an item is popular or valuable. But, attendees like 20-year-old Yusuf Lewis, say the biggest issue is an over saturation of resellers.

Lewis flew to D.C. for Sneaker Con from Atlanta, Ga. He's the first person in line at the event and even though he says he loves sneakers, that's not really what the event is about for him anymore. "It's becoming more of a resellers playground instead of a person who's passionate about sneakers," he says. "It's not their playground anymore."

For many people, reselling shoes makes them a lot of money. And Lewis has done pretty well for himself too. He says he travels to almost every Sneaker Con using the money he makes from buying and selling shoes. But for many other attendees the prevalence of resellers makes it hard to participate in the sneaker culture.

Comte Momo of Washington, D.C., says he doesn't like all of the reselling and it's hard for him as someone who actually wants to wear the shoes to find the ones he wants at a reasonable price. "It just hurts when I watch somebody buy a size 12 in the new ones that dropped. And I just know that they're gonna go resell instead of a person like me loving and cherishing the shoe" he says. "But, get your bread. I can't be mad."

Yuming Wu, one of the co-founders of Sneaker Con says he isn't worried about the balance between resellers and buyers.

"This show is not about buying, selling and trading," he explains. "Obviously, there is a lot of commerce happening here. But for us, we're really about putting together a great vibe for for people who are interested in this subject to hang out with other people."

There are plenty of other things to do at the convention like a watch a basketball game of 1-on-1 knockout, or interact with artists creating shoe- related artwork and doing customizations, or attend panels featuring people in the shoe industry.

Wu says, as the convention moves into its tenth year, he wants to incorporate much more programming and turn the convention into more a festival.

Buying, selling, and trading may not be entirely what the show is about, but it is the central activity at Sneaker Con. At least here in Washington, D.C.

Much of the space is taken up by more than 200 vendors who have set up tables and brought hundreds of pairs of shoes to try and sell. Some people just walk around with a couple pairs in hand looking to trade or sell to a willing buyer. But most of the action, the bargaining, haggling, and trading, is happening in the trading pit.

Anyone who wants to, can bring as many shoes as they like and create a space for themselves on the floor.

That's where 18-year-old Lateef Amdali is set up.

"A goal for me is to definitely go home with a couple of sneakers that I've been wanting for a while," he says. "And definitely sell some things I'm trying to get rid of in my collection to make a profit off of it."

He says he started buying and reselling shoes when he was around 13 years old.

"I was asking my mom and dad to buy me sneakers [and] sometimes they'll say 'no,' so I had to find a way to get them myself," he says. When he figured out that he could resell his shoes for a profit, then buy more shoes, and resell those, he quickly turned his hobby into a business.

"I just got really into it and learning [that] I can make money from this I didn't have to have a job necessarily," he says as he sells pair of shoes for $280 dollars cash.

Children as young as 10 years old like Theo Galpert of Chevy Chase, Md., were in the trading pit too getting in on the action. He says he learned about buying and reselling from his older brother 13-year-old Bennett. Their father, Josh Galpert, says that he's impressed by what his sons are doing. "I think it teaches a lot about how to build a business and what goes into building a business," he says. "And that's been fascinating to watch how they price things, how they negotiate, how they keep track of their inventory, which is a challenging thing to do when you're you know, 13, 10, and 7."

Co-founder Wu says it's a mixture of everything; the commerce, the artistry, the fashion, that makes sneaker culture attractive around the world.

"A sneakerhead in Melbourne, Australia, they're as interested in Nikes, Jordans, [and] Yeezys as much as the kid in in Phoenix, Arizona." Or here in Washington D.C.

Meantime, back in the trading pit, Amdali says even though his goal is to make a profit, it's not just about money. "I definitely have my own sneaker collection. My [Jordan] ones collection goes crazy — 18 pairs right now," he says. "I love the game."

For Amdali, and Sneaker Con, the games continues year-round.

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