"Curiosity has a way of driving us to do some strange things..."
It’s an odd thing: to walk around with your head down staring at people’s shoes for four days. What began as an innocent conversation with my friend Brendan about the viability of a certain waffle-soled brand in 2026, expanded into a conversation about the wellbeing and viability of core skate brands writ large. Are the kids still skating in Emericas? What old heads are still running Etnies or Lakais or DCs? Has sponsoring Slow Impact for the last four years helped propel New Balance forward? Curiosity has a way of driving us to do some strange things, and this situation was no different; so for the sake of renegade social science, I became a literal shoegazer. When I started this, I thought I’d just do a quick go around on the first day and that’d be that. I definitely didn’t plan on counting shoes for nearly all of the events, but one “well, I might as well,” snowballed pretty quickly, and morphed into “well, at this point I might as well write something about it.” The result is this poorly written dispatch, written by a Tempe local, attempting to understand the state of skate footwear among the varying aged attendees of Slow Impact 2026.
The loose hypothesis here was that New Balance would be a clear winner, solely (get it?) based on having sponsored the event for the entirety of its existence. Also, with the anecdotal observation that the age of the audience at Slow Impact generally skews in the direction of late 20’s to 40’s, I expected to see a lot of cupsoles in the early-onset arthritis community. The other piece of this was that question of whether Vans still had a notable market share, when they have seemingly been receding in popularity for the last five years or so. What followed was a foolhardy endeavor to rush around panel sessions, my head lowered, scanning unsuspecting feet. My methodology involved taking mental notes of shoe brand, color and model (if I could decipher), and pants (to distinguish between persons). Real informal stuff here, this was not the pinnacle of anthropological studies, just a quick pulse check by an uninitiated observer. Any attempt to say hello or try to explain what I was doing tended to derail me for at least 5-10 minutes each time, so I tried to stay incognito and focused on my task, only addressing people when it was obvious that I looked like a total creep. I’d weave around groups of skate congregants and quickly add an x to my notes app to mark down the brand of shoe that was on their feet. I found that just about every person I elaborated to what I was doing and the information I was gathering was super interested to hear about it, and each asked followup questions.
As I had guessed, New Balance was a clear and obvious leader here, nearly doubling the counts of the other sports shoe brands. On day one, with everyone busy saying hello and catching up at the intro session at Mitchell Park, I was able to do the most complete shoegazing session I had. People stayed in groups generally as they caught up and it was easy to meander about the fields and take stock while the skaters enjoyed a desert heatwave amidst a horrible winter. I counted 44 pairs of New Balances on that first day. What shocked me though, was that Vans had secured the day one second place spot, with 25 pairs of Old Schools, Half Cabs, Eras, Authentic Mids, Slip-ons and Skate Hi’s peppering the park. Nike and Cons were next with 23 pairs each, followed by Adidas at 15 pairs. Of the classical sports brands, Asics still seems to be slow to gain traction, at least at the educated auntie and unc convention, with only five pairs spotted the first day. A majority of the core footwear brands (Emerica, Es, Etnies, Ipath, Lakai, Last Resort) each had six pairs or less out there. I saw no DC’s on the first day.
The next few days flew past with little change to the counts of the first day, with numbers fluctuating by multiples less than 10. With the panels in action, I definitely settled into enjoying the talks a bit more than I should have (shoutout Mathias, Betsy, Glenney and Lee). Though there was definitely a steep uptick in the Slow Impact collab shoes once they were released, they spread quickly without changing the raw brand numbers much. Most of the core brands increased in numbers, Emerica and Etnies had a pair or two more each day; it was cool to see little pockets of resurgence. I saw a few pairs of Fallens out there, a single pair of Strayes (I think you know who), and a couple pairs of Ipaths that weren’t on Iggy’s feet. I did see one kid wearing a pair of D3’s in the audience at the absolutely incredible Sandy Kim and Jerry Hsu panel ("The price of being your authentic self is rejection"), and caught plenty of questionable chiller choices (I can’t hate too much on a pair of Bush’s Baked Beans branded slides).
By the time the final session at The Wedge came around, I was so over counting shoes it hurt, but having gotten myself involved this far, I had to see it through in some way. The solution was to try to document at least one pair of shoes from each brand. Obviously this sort of thing taints the pool of data, when it isn’t guaranteed that each person at a public park is also an attendee of the geriatric skaters conference, but that didn’t deter me too much, cause everyone loves a fit check. I saw plenty of variances of colors and models all across the board, but I want to highlight two standouts: A pair of Quiksilver shoes (do they still make stuff?) and a pair of early 2000’s style bulky ass DC shoes, both worn by teenagers who seemed to simply be local wedge rats. I guess trends tend to circle back around right?
So what does all of this mean?
I can conclusively say that New Balance holds a tight grip here on Slow Impact, which would seem to bear that sponsoring the event each year has had a tangible effect on loyalty to the brand, as I cannot recall this level of a preponderance of NB’s in previous years. I can also conclusively say that the sports brands are holding on strong, though Adidas seems to be waning in popularity, Vans is still in the running with the waffle putting up consistent high numbers. Asics is still struggling to gain traction, but they’ve got some super sick dudes skating for them, and a pretty cool branding schtick IMO, so maybe this is the year.
Finally, I think we can probably say that while the core legacy brands may be lagging behind, there’s a dedicated base that can be rebuilt upon. They may not be doing the same numbers as the sports brands, but they are holding on and may be able to make some headway if they keep fighting and get kids stoked on them again. I feel like having Matt King on board might help sole tech with that. All that being said, this Slow Impact, like each preceding it, has been one for the books. From a local’s perspective, it’s a breath of fresh air and a much needed burst of optimism in dark times. I don’t think I’ll count shoes again next year, it’s better to just take it all in, learn some things, and be a part of the community.
