Observation: Sneaker

Observation One Wednesday, January 22nd to Saturday, January 24th Time: 7pm- 9pm Description of Location: my first observation has two different locations, which are online websites and retail store. There are many websites that introduce sneakers information to us. One of my favorite and also the one that I observe is sneakernews.com. This is a very professional and awesome website which provides the newest information, picture about any kind of special sneakers. You also can check the release date about specific shoes. However, the most interesting thing in this web is you can make comments about what you think about shoes. Another location is a retail store which locates at Southpark Mall named Footlocker. Footlocker is one of the most big and success sportswear and footwear retailer. It cooperates with many sports company like Nike and Adidas. So each time Nike will release some limited shoes, footlocker also release.

Comment [YL1]: Describe more about what th

Footlcoker looks like incase of some people never want to there before. Comment [YL2]: The describe of location is good.

Figured World: It is a world that has its particular rules and behaviors. It consists of its own actors and artifacts.

Rules: For the store sales, most of time, you have to get up early to line up in front of store because the shoes are limited. You will have signed a ticket and the staff will draw the sweepstakes. So its pretty hard to get it from stores unless you know some special ways or people. In this observation, I observed how kobe prelude 8 released. In partnership with mall management, select House of Hoops by Foot Locker stores will implement a sweepstakes ticket procedure* in order to purchase the Nike Kobe Prelude VIII (on sale 1/25/13 for $200). The sweepstakes tickets will be given out Wednesday, January 22nd and Thursday, January 23rd. If your ticket number is selected, you will be notified by phone on Friday, January 24th. These procedures are for select stores only. You have to wait for the select store open and get tickets from store staffs. They will ask you phone number and size of your shoes. After all of this process, the only thing you can do is waiting. For the online sales, it will be much easier but expensive. You can check and follow information about the shoes you want from sneakernews.com. It will give you the information about how and where you can buy it. For example, it will post a link to ebay or other website for you to purchase. You also can see the comment in the talking area. Some people talks about they have some easy way to get it and if you want, you can connect with them. Some people do the business of selling limited shoes online,so you can purchase them from e-bay or some other private website. Most of time you can get whatever you want, however, you can to pay double or more price compare with the original price that the shoes is.

Comment [YL3]: You have really good description of the rules about the people in actor.

So either ways have their advantages and disadvantages. By the way, there are also plenty of websites or books introduce the newest information about shoes. You can see some people give their comments about how they think about specific shoes. In general, different situations have different rules. For instance, when you are lineup for waiting, you cannot cut in line unless you want some strong black people to kick your ass. Also, when you sell shoes no matter from stores or online sales, you must make sure that the shoes are authentic. If you sale fake shoes, you will have a big trouble.

Comment [YL4]: Funny.

Actors: actors are people who play in specific figure world. They follow the certain rules and behaviors.

Fans of sneaker: they are people who really love and collect shoes. I am a good example. Collecting shoes is my biggest interest. I view sneakers information every day. We also view some sneaker online forum to talk about our experience about buying and maintaining shoes. When we find some shoes that we really like, we will try our best to collect more information about how to buy it. Seller: in some sense, sellers are also fans of sneaker but they but it not for collecting, they buy it for business. Most of time, they are not doing business by self, they will be groups. They will have different role in this figure world. For instance, some people will be scalpers; some people are in charge of selling. So they have different responsibility. Retail staff: retail staffs are people who work in store. Before the shoes release, it will first arrive at store, so the retail staffs are the first people to see it. Their job gives them a big opportunity to deal through backdoor. So retail staffs are biggest seller.

Artifacts: artifacts are things that are made or created by actors. They dont need to be an actual thing; they can be minding or thought. Shoes: everything we talk about is around shoes. The most value and hottest shoes that most of sneakers like is jordan. Every year, nike will retro several jordan shoes which attract our best attention. Website: there are two kind of website.First is website like sneakernews.com to introduce information to us. Second are online sales. It is a important source for both seller and buyer to easily get the shoes they want. But, online sales website also has their different. First is official website like Nike. This kind of website sells shoes with original price, so both seller and buyer can but it fairly. However,

Comment [YL5]: Include the store and ticket here.

Comment [YL6]: Also add money and comput into this catalog.

another website like ebay, it is a good place for seller to sell shoes with a high price. Discourse community: it groups of people share common goals. Fans of sneaker: This is good example of discourse community. They have common goal which is getting their favorite shoes. Seller: the common goal for the seller is getting all shoes and selling a nice price for anyone.
Comment [YL7]: A little bit confusing for people didnt know about.

Literacy practice: way of communication. Website comment: you can see many people talking their opinion in forum area. They will ask many questions that were relative to sneakers like price and where to buy.

Comment [YL8]: Talking about how they talk a friendly or rude way.

Observation: January 22, 7pm. I viewed the sneakernews.com and check the newest information about a pair of shoes which would release on Saturday. It gave us lots of pictures about this pair of shoes from different angles. 7:10pm- I opened footlocker.com and find that this shoes will implement a sweepstakes ticket procedure in order to purchase. The sweepstakes tickets will be given out Wednesday, January 22nd and Thursday, January 23rd. If your ticket number is selected, you will be notified by phone on Friday, January 24th. I checked the Footlocker in the Southpark Mall was one of the retail stores that would implement ticket, so I prepared to go there tomorrow. January 23, 7:30am- now I am stand in front of a retail footlocker store in order to get ticket. Even through it was 7:30am, I was not the first one to be here. There was three man already waiting here.The store was closed and it will open at 8am. 7:50am- now there were about ten people here. Everyone lined up and chatted with eath other. I talked with a person who named Joe and he showed me his collections picture from his Facebook. 8am- the store open. Everyone went to the front desk to register personal information. Everyone followed the rules. The process was very successful. 8am-6pm. There were many people view shoes in store, only part of them registered for ticket. After one days observation, almost 100 people went to get the ticket. I asked the salesman when they will call the lucky men and they said if you didnt get call before 9 pm, you ticket number will not be selected.

9pm- I went back to home and still didnt get the call from store, so I checked some comment forum in footlocker.com and sneakernews.com. Most of people didn t get call and complain about the salesman only call their friends to let them get the shoes. There were a few people starting to advertise for these shoes and tried to sell it with a high price.

Observation two January 25th Time: 7:30am- 8:30am

Description of Location: my second observation is observing how a pair of shoes sells from official channels. There are four most common official channels, which are Footlocker, Finishline, Footaction and Nike. Twitter is also observation because Nike use twitter to release the link that let you directly find the selling page.

Rules: Because when some limited shoes will sell online, the website will have lots of viewers. So you have to login in to your account several minutes before the launch time. Due to the number of people that want to purchase shoes, youd better to have a high-speed computer and high-speed internet. Most of time, after you add shoes into your cart, you will wait several minutes to let website to confirm. You need to be patient to wait the confirmation. If you close the waiting page, you will lost the chance to purchase. Even through everyone want to have equal opportunity to purchase shoes from official website, there are still some way you can easily get. In the figure world of sneaker, there is a cheat application called bot, which can shorten your buying time to increase your opportunity to get the shoes. This is a tacit rule in sneakers world.

Comment [YL9]: Even though I have no idea about what are you talking about, I still think this have many details.

Actors: Fans or buyer: people like me get up early, sit in front of laptop and keep refresh the selling page in order to purchase shoes.

Observation: 7:30am: I got up early because the shoes will release at 8am EST. You had to login in your account 30 minutes before to make sure you will not be kicked out. I opened four major website which will sell the shoes: footlocker, finish-line, footaction and

Nike. The website showed a countdown clock. By the way, Nike had a difference between other online seller, which is they will post a link on twitter at 8am. I checked twitter and it didnt post yet. 7:40am: I opened some pervious twitters that talking about this shoes. Some people left messages that asking the price of this shoes and asking if it had a grade school size. There was a people whose twitter name was Kyle Tittle said that the real launch tip was staying in the bed and going to ebay when you wake up, gonna be impossible via twitter link. This is a truth in some sense because it is pretty hard to buy it from official channels. 8am: now it was 8am, the twitter post a link and I clicked it. I quickly selected my size and clicked add it to cart. The website showed in the waiting page. At the same time, I also did the same thing in other online store. I could open the waiting page in Finishline and Footaction. However, I even could not open footlockers website and it said there is a website error because the number of viewers. 8:05am: I still could not open Footlockers website and Nike, Finishline and Footaction kicked me out from the waiting page and showed this item was out of stock. 8:10am: now, I finally opened Footlockers website, I selected my size, clicked add to my cart but the website said now the shoes current are all in others cart. So I refresh their website again and again to see if there were some replenishment. 9:21am: Nike post a twitter said the kobe prelude VIII has sold out on Nike.com. So it means you could not buy it from any online store. 9:30am: after Nike post this twitter, there were many people left comment here. Some people complain that the quantitive was small, so its impossible to get it. Also, some people sais some bad words like shoes were gone before the link tweeted...WTF. It was really funny to see how people react.

Comment [YL10]: Move the people in actor.

Observation three January 26th to January 27th Time: 10am to 8:47pm

Description of Location: in my third observation, I am going to observation how you can buy a pair of limited shoes from ebay when you have no chance to buy it from official store. Ebay is one of tthe biggest online store platform in the world. You almost can buy anything you want include limited shoes.

Rules: the most important rule is the shoe is authentic. Because most of the shoes you want to buy is limited, so many seller will sell fake or replica to replace authentic shoes. The first thing you need to do is check the description of this item to see if the seller says this is authentic. No one wants to pay more to buy a fake one, so as a seller you must sell authentic shoes if you have a high price. For buyer, you also need to pay the item quickly, the fast you pay, the less problem you will receive. In this case, the seller opened a bid for this shoes, if you offer a highest price at the time the bid was end, you will win this auction.

Actors: Buyer(myself): Buyer like me already buy several limited shoes from ebay. Although they are expensive, this is a way you can get it. Seller: In this observation, I observed a people whose name on ebay is hoffmanj92 sell a pair of nike air jordan 1 retro high og.

Comment [YL11]: Add some actors about bid shoe with you at the same time.

Observation: Jan 25th, 10am: in order to do this observation and also buy a pair of shoes that I dream, I search this shoes from ebay and find a appropriate item. A ebay member hoffmanj92 opened a bid for air jordan 1 retro with a price $0.99. This item started from January 23rd and ended on January 26th at 17:46:13 PST. 10:10am: I checked some information about whether the shoes is authentic, after I made sure about that, I followed the seller and wait for place bid. The reason I did this is when you place bid at the last minutes, other buyer didnt have enough time to place a high bid again, so you will get it. 10:20am: I noticed that there were some buyers already placing bids. The first people whose name is O***J placed a bid 26 minutes after the seller opened the bid with a price of $200. Now the highest bid was $360. 3pm to Jan26th, 8pm: I checked this bid serval times during these 23 hours but no one placed a high bid. The highest bid was still $360, so maybe many buyer had same thought with me, which was place at the last minutes. 8:45pm: now, it was the last one minutes for this bid, I could not wait and place a bid with $370. After 10 seconds, another buyer place $375. Five seconds later, a new bid came out with $380. During the last one minutes, this bid became more competitive. There were seven buyer placed bid and I became the winner with $405 after a successfully place the highest bid in the last two second.

Comment [YL12]: This observation show pret good process and details how you buy a shoe.

Interview: I interviewed my friend Vincent. He is in Wisconsin, so I interview him by phone. 1) Are you a sneaker? If you are, how long have you been a sneaker? Yeah, of course I am a sneaker. I have been a sneaker for six years.

Comment [YL13]: The interview is good, it is very describe.

2) Why do you want to be a sneaker? Em. This is a long story. I bought my first pair of shoes when I was a senior in middle school. At that time, I started to play basketball and watched NBA. Every time I saw those players wear cool shoes and played well, I dreamed that one day I can play like them or wear like them. So I bought my first sneaker, I still remembered it was Jordan 20 team. After I bought some sneakers, I started to understand the culture of sneakers and the sneakers didnt only wear it to only play basketball, it also became a kind of fashion and I do love shoes. Thats why a wan to be a sneaker.

3) How do you collect information about sneaker, from website or magazine? Actually, I get information more than that. You know there are many way you can get sneaker information. For example, there are some apps in the apple store, so if you have an iphone you can download and most of them are free. They will give you enough information of sneaker and you can check it whenever you want. I also get news from sneakernews.com, twitter or instagram, there are many people talking about shoes today, so you can get it in many ways.

4) How many collections do you have? I dont know, man. I do have a lot of shoes but I never count it. Maybe 70 or 80.

5) Where do you get them? One third of them get from Nike or some online store like that. Others are getting from ebay or some personal retail store.

6) Can you give us some suggestions for someone who want to be a sneaker? Sure. First of all i money, you know. Being a sneaker need to collect shoes. And most of them are not cheap, so you must have enough money to support you keep working on it. Second are friends. Having more friends in this circle will help you a

lot. More friends mean you will have more opportunities than others to get what you what. So trying to get more friends will do help you.