Nike and Wale Are About to Drop 2024’s Most Beautiful Foamposites

First of all, it’s not the Department of Motor Vehicles. Anyone who calls the DMV home has had to explain that to someone at some point, that it’s an acronym for the Washington, D.C./Maryland/Virginia region, a part of the country where state lines and city limits blur as Northern Virginia cities like Alexandria, the nation’s capital, and the southernmost cities of Maryland (Baltimore chiefest among them) blend into a distinct cultural region. For anyone who knows or comes from the area, “DMV” holds a different weight in their shared vernacular. It doesn’t matter if the rest of the country associates it with one of the more exhausting errands we all have to run at some point or another. If you know, you know.

Second of all, you’re crazy if you’re trying to put up buckets in a pair of Nike Foamposites in the year 2024. When the shoe debuted back in 1997 and became an on-court favorite of Penny Hardaway, it was lauded for its futuristic design and premium technological advances (the upper is composed of a liquid-injected polyurethane that molds to the shape of your foot over time the more you wear it). The future it seemed to signal has long since passed and the name of the game in basketball sneaker tech has moved in the direction of lightweight low-tops, leaving the bulky and heavy Foamposite in the dust from a performance standpoint. To many, it now looks more like a relic of the past than a message from the future. But if you rep the DMV, you know.

The DMV is different—different in the sort of ways you can only understand from afar by keying into some of the fruits of the region: Rico Nasty and The Wire and Logic and Minor Threat and John Waters and McKinley Dixon, just to name a few. It is difficult to articulate the common thread that runs throughout the cultural output it produces, but the link is tangible. It has long been an unsung hub of sneaker culture, full of passionate collectors who know the game well. And whether you’re a local head picking up a limited-run collab from a local boutique like the esteemed A Ma Maniére or just hitting up the nearest Foot Locker to see what’s good, if you rep the DMV you own a pair of Foams. They aren’t timeless classics like New York’s Air Force 1s or the Nike Cortez’s vice grip on Los Angeles. The DMV isn’t about timelessness or mass appeal. It’s weird and wild and doesn’t aim to cater to outsiders. Perhaps it’s only fitting that it would latch onto something as singular as the Foamposite.