JT, AKA The Sneaker Savant, has been in the sneaker world long enough to remember when eBay was church, when Dadas sold out, and when nobody questioned either of those things. He's been a fixture in the Sneaker History Discord for years, built a following on Instagram under @TheSneakerSavant, writes over at thesneakersavant.substack.com, and has been quietly one of the most interesting thinkers in this whole space... he just doesn't always show his face.

This one gets personal pretty fast. We talk about the Portland gathering and what it meant to finally be in a room full of people who just get it, without needing to explain themselves. We get into why Instagram is broken, why eBay is still our church, and why the algorithm is really good at exactly one thing... flattening culture. JT makes the case that the Dadas were absolutely a thing in Northern California and he's completely right, and we both wonder what stories are being lost because the internet only amplifies what everybody already agrees on.

We also get into the sneaker card JT made for the Portland trip, a Jordan card with MJ in a Blazers jersey, how that one piece of cardstock led to a conversation with Ken Black, one of the architects of Nike team sports, which somehow led to JT learning who designed a jersey he'd wanted since he was a kid living in Great Britain. That story alone is worth the listen.

This is a conversation about sneakers, but honestly it's more about community, memory, and why the stuff that mattered to us deserves to be documented before it gets lost.

In this episode:

The Foot Locker chaos on February 13th and what sneaker riots say about where the culture is right now. Why JT stopped buying shoes and started routing them to people who'd actually want them. The eBay rabbit hole that both of us still fall into on the regular, and why eBay is still the best place for actual sneaker knowledge. JT's 265-days-on-Instagram calculation and why the math kind of ruins you. The Portland gathering, getting the invite, and what it felt like to finally be in that room. Making 60 Jordan/Blazers cards by hand, how that one move changed the whole second night. Ken Black, Drake Ramberg, the Arsenal jersey, and how sneaker passion creates these connections that genuinely could not be planned. Why Steph Curry wearing Chris Webber's Dadas matters more than most people gave it credit for. And the argument that Substack might be the only platform left where regional sneaker stories and real cultural memory can survive.

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