The Bobbito's shoes

"No más, no más.

That's what the defense is sayin'.

They can't take it anymore.”

In world basketball’s Mecca there’s no bucket that hasn’t heard this sentence. In basketball’s Mecca there’s no blacktop that hasn't felt the friction of his shoes. Once I saw him entering Miss Mamie’s Spoonbread Too on the 110th street, in Harlem, with Pro Keds on his shoes, a sneaker that few knows because “old fashioned”, but in New York, everyone knows who wore those. They were used by Pistol Pete Maravich, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Willis Reed, Nate “Tiny” Archibald, Jojo White, Lou Hudson, but most of all by basketball’s pioneer George Mikan. So this is New York’s Shoe.

“It’s the J-U-ICE!”, as he says it, both when he score or play some record when he's playing and when he’s speaking on the radio. Here, everyone knows him as “Kool Bob Love”, or better “Bobbito the Barber”, or even better “DJ Cucumber Slice”. But at the civil registry, he’s just Robert “Bobbito” Garcia, the one who told me about that episode about Conrad “McNasty” McRae. The shoes he wore are the ones the brand has dedicated to him with a limited edition for their 30th anniversary. “The Legend” is at the time the glue that bond street basketball with Hip-Hop/Rap and Black Music.

As a kid, he went to Lower Merion High School, the same that will forge a talent named Kobe Bryant a few years later. Since the first day his hands has touched a basketball, he started to collect sneakers maniacally. Indeed he will publish a book where he explains the origins of every shoe, where he saw it and who wore it in NYC. The Bible is called: "Where'd You Get Those? New York City’s Sneaker Culture: 1960-1987". In this book, he also told how the legendary DJ Kool Herc earned his White Playground nickname in East Harlem.

His touch on the discs, his touch on ball’s leather, the sound of his fingertips with his rhythmical movements, made him - and still make - a charming player. Ha had a “boogie-ball” that only him’s still pronouncing. Way more hypnotic, though, is the radio show that he used to lead with his friend Adrian Bartos, aka Stretch Armstrong, on WKCR 89.9FM. Without this show, the music would’ve never had Big Pun, Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes, Fat Joe, Cam'ron, DMX, Wu-Tang Clan, Fugees, Talib Kweli, Big L, The Notorious B.I.G., MF DOOM, MF Grimm, Kool Keith, Cage, Eminem and many others.

As soon as the spring sun comes out, lace up your shoes, play an episode of The Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show, with the ball go to the first playground and shoot some “From Diddy-Wah-Diddy (Harlem slang). You’ll fell closer to Harlem, in fact, you’ll really be there. I was forgetting it, Nike also dedicated him a shoe for Air Force 1’s “25 Years ago”. They’re Rasheed “Ball Don’t Lie” Wallace’s favorites and if you’re sneakerheads you must have those.