Lobster Dunk
Lobster Dunk
I was looking at the Nike SB webpage and only two shoes jumped out at me. Then I thought about Nick Diamond's Tiffany Dunk and that Gucci one. They both had that weird luxury thing. So then I'm like, "Fuck. What does Boston have?" When someone's visiting, they always want to have lobster. Lobster is the only thing on the menu that says "market price," or considered to be very expensive. The other reason I thought of it is super personal.
Bay State Lobster Co., Boston
My Aunt Gert practically raised me. Every Saturday morning her and I would drive from Needham, MA, to the Bay State Lobster Co. in Boston. There were these huge fish tanks all full of lobsters and I would go there and play with them. That was my fucking childhood sanctuary. I've also been deep sea fishing a thousand times. I spent my summers on Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod. I know everything about the ocean.
THE RUBBER BAND
Lobsters are all different shades of red when they're wild. They're mauve and brown and have algae on them. I included all those different colors. Then I'm thinking about putting all these extras on it, like the fucking two-cent rubber band around the toe. It's just so ridiculous, but it made sense. It's a no-brainer. If you're getting a rubber band, I want a pair of claw crackers that say Nike, I want a bib that says Nike and I wanted the box to be a lobster trap.
THE WOOD BOX
My original idea was that the first fifty boxes are actually made out of wood. I just put it all together and I sent an email. I said, "Hey guys, I really think we should think about this," and it escalated from there. I just found this email that says, "I'm not an artist, I'm not a designer, but this just flowed out of me. I don't know how it happened." It was very strange how this all came about.
“I’m not an artist, I’m not a designer, but this just flowed out of me.”
DEON POINTE, GENERAL MANAGER OF CONCEPTS
Rob came through with this lobster idea and it was hideous. It was the worst thing I'd ever seen, but the rest of the guys were like, "This is sick! Let's see what we can do with this." I just didn't get it and it seemed pretty generic. Jeff did the Staple Dunk at the time with the pigeon on it, and it just seemed now that we were following suit. He had a great amount of success with that, but I felt we were doing something to me that just seemed too easy. We fine tuned what Rob had given us, which was a drawing he probably did with crayons. We turned it up a little bit and added the liner print which was reminiscent of lobster bibs. We added a few minor details and sent it to Nike and the guys over there were pretty stoked on it. We got the first round sample back and quite honestly, it looked amazing. I had to eat my words and I apologized to Rob. I said, "This is sick!"
