John Kim 
Bacon makes everything better, doesn’t it? In 2005, Nike teamed up with Dave Ortiz of Dave’s Quality Meats to design a pair of the uber-comfortable Nike Air Max 90. If you’ve ever been inside DQM in downtown Manhattan, you’ll notice that the store’s got a butcher’s shop theme running from wall to wall, with apparel hanging from meathooks and other items stored inside refrigerator cases – although none of the items for sale can actually be grilled and consumed. It’s this distinct store layout and concept that made DQM such a major standout in the lower-Manhattan sneaker boutique community that by 2005 started to become just a tad crowded, but even today DQM maintain’s its title as one of the go-to spots for sneakerheads and skaters and even recently teamed up with Vans to open up the DQM x Vans General Store in SoHo.
The use of ‘bacon’ is how Ortiz arrived at the carnal colorway of fatty beige and tender red, and Ortiz noted that it took just a day to complete (the guy just really loves bacon)! A limited-edition Hyperstrike version, which features the Dave’s Quality Meats tongue label, a chicken bone inside the heel of the sock bed, and even scuff marks on the toe box to mark dry spots usually found on strips of the cured pork belly, was released in-store (another version with a regular Nike tongue label and box was also released in wider distribution). The DQM x Air Max 90 is indeed a playful take on the store’s lighthearted ‘theme-park’ nature, but the colorway is strictly considered to be one of the greatest of all-time and has served as the inspiration for other Air Max releases like the Air Max 95/360 of the One Time Only Pack and the Air Max 90 Current Huarache. In addition, like the three previous Air Max 90s featured prior to tonight, the Bacon 90s are considered to be one of the most memorable sneaker collaborations of all-time and is quite often near the top of ‘best-of’ lists for those who reveled in collaboration-driven sneakerhead era, and continues to be a coveted item for sneaker collectors today and hence an easy choice for a spot in Classics Revisited.
DQM x Nike Air Max 90 ‘Bacon’
Sail/Sheen-Straw-Medium Brown
310766-161
11/2004
Add’l Photos: imgnyc on eBay.
