Snake America Fifty Nine
Snake is a bi-weekly email covering salable goods. Today, Heaven's Gate Nikes and 1960s Champion sweats. Reading online? Subscribe.
eBay: Nike Decade, the Heaven's Gate shoe, 11.5, BIN $1,200: Great auction, forwarded by my friend Ben. What an important pair of shoes! These are the most important sneakers since the Air Jordan I. The Nike Decades were the sneakers worn on the feet of the prominently-photographed Heaven's Gate cult members who committed a mass suicide (39 folks) in 1997, on March 26. You may remember the photos: cold FBI framing of victims, face-down, some face-up, all covered in blankets, some on bunk beds, all in Nikes--black with a big white swoosh--feet sticking off the foot-rails of the bunk beds, or over the blankets. Those loud black Nikes looked out of place in a mass suicide scene, like a Pope with a wristwatch. Adbusters ran a critical mock-ad using the funereal photo and the tag line, Just Do It. That image must have made people think. Was the implication that the buying public was no different than the brainwashed dead? Did wearing shoes imply something worse? The photo of Marshall Herf Applewhite, the cult's leader, is nicely on the front of the auction. He misinterpreted the book of Revelations to include mass death and space travel and aliens. When you enter Nike 93, or Nike NIB, on eBay, his face shows up on the search page.
My favorite detail that comes up when reading about cults is that many adherents were people with otherwise full social calendars. Generally, documentaries about cult abductions or initiation stories begin with the principal describing a busy day he or she was having: how they ran into someone at the ice cream place, or while fishing, and that they decided they needed more, and so they joined their acquaintance's religious cult. It's never a torturous process alone in a bedroom that leads these people into taking a wrong turn down the road. Same for many cult leaders. What comes out in documentaries is that people who run cults also have full dance schedules. In the David Koresh documentary(1) they mention that he likes ice cream and he'd be eating cones a lot. Just hanging around and eating ice cream. Maybe that's what they say in him. The Nikes on the deceased's feet look to be in good condition. The shoe has a date of 1993. Did Heaven's Gate buy them then and keep them on ice? Did Applewhite clean out a sporting goods store and take the full size run and held onto it for a few years? I emailed the media representative of Heaven's Gate, asking if they remembered whether cult members wore Nikes in the 1980s and if Mr. Applewhite wore Nikes then, too, and also what type of clothing he wore. I received a response in 15 minutes:
We always wore a lower end tennis shoes is the house. We can't remember Nike. Maybe Converse, Keds or Reboks (sic). Ti and Do(2) seemed to wear Rockports. Sometimes we did too. Ti wore polyester pants with a crew top. She always had a light windbreaker on also. Do wore baggy pants with loose fitting shirts. Ti and Do did not wear Nikes.
I then asked the rep if Ti and Do bought Dynastys for everyone in Heaven's Gate. Was there a reason they all wore the same shoe? They responded in 14 minutes:
Do and the Group tried a few pairs of Nike shoes at the end of February, 1997, at a local shoe store. After buying and returning some styles they finally purchased the Nike Decade series for all 39 individuals on 03/01/1997. The final balance they paid that day was $548.45.
That was the only time all the Group wore them. They wore the entire outfit on Friday night, March 21st for the final taping and them put them all on again on Saturday, March 22nd and kept them on for the three days of departure on the 22nd, 23rd and 24th. The cult was in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., which is near San Diego. It wasn't until about 2001 that American sporting goods stores got cleaned out of new old stock--of old sneakers, like four-year old Dynastys. Do and the group's sneakers came out to under 20 a pair. A pair of the sneakers sold at auction a couple years later. The rep said it was the only time the cult leader wore Nikes. There are stores now which still have new old stock for cheap, though not many. About 10 years ago it seemed like half of New York City wore good sneakers. Visiting town, one would see homeless people on the train and off in Air Jordans, and just folks in Prestos or better. The lore was Jordans ... you couldn't buy them in New York on Saturday release days. They'd sell out everywhere ... don't even ask. It was a trickle-down. The hungry people who found a way to find themselves in Jordans set a pace, and the just folks ran with it. Many mom and pops stores has mosaic inventory ... whatever looked good may have been different. That hasn't entirely gone away. Anecdotal evidence says one of three intransigents who don't wear boots and who ride trains wear Michael Jordans. One wonders ... if not for a different turn down the road, might these lost souls have entered Heaven's Gate, and found something else, like the ultimate release that so many people found in 1997 ... or might they have stopped the whole shit from going down?
eBay: Champion one-color tag sweatpants, $195: I am a big fan of no-affiliation salable goods for many reasons. The consumer gets more for his or her money buying non-store vintage goods since every dollar in the purchase goes to the product. With the right amount of attention, the consumer's money and time helps ferret out possessions both more unique and nondescript than stock from a store. I think the quality of materials is better in silver-era vintage American clothing(3), and the quality of design is better, than retail goods. Besides the smell, which sucks, and time spent, becoming knowledgeable about vintage American clothing is the best way to stretch your clothing dollar outside of buying a rag house and hiring the people who already work there to dig through the inventory and pick out what fits you, but only after they clean them off. Or flying to Thailand for suits. But ... the best part about vintage American clothing and its attendant market is that ... certain pairs of sweatpants sell for $200. Old Champion clothing, with a single-color tag, is canon vintage and a pair like the above-mentioned can demand that price or higher. Other identical pairs have been claimed for significantly less. But a $200 sale is not out of the realm of possibility. If the above-mentioned doesn't end up at that, others have before. Others will one day. It's inspiring. How can these pieces of garbage be worth so much money? Before I knew about vintage clothing, the thought of wearing used sweatpants inspired a different kind of fear than the kind I now know these engender.
Thanks for reading.
Snake
Last Snake: Ended items (ended!)
Snake Before That: Finck denim coveralls, 350 Benz (relisted; for sale)
(1) Not sure which one... How many can there be?
(2) Ti and Do were a couple names that Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, who helped him run a group that turned into Heaven's Gate, went by. (Applewhite was Do. Nettles died in 1985, of Cancer.)
(3) 60s to 80s.