David on Tall Ramones (Mainline, of course)

July 24, 2014
Written By David Chen

This is a story that Tim, the blog owner; Levi, our SLP built photographer; and Jesse, the best men’s sportswear salesman in Sak’s history, have come to love.

There’s one thing you gotta know about me and it’s when I want something bad, I’m extremely obsessive about it.

Let the story begin.

About a year ago, I really started getting into the Rick aesthetic. For those that don’t know, I’m talking about Rick Chai. You may know him as Richard, but we go way back so I call him Rick. J/K. We’re talking Rick Owens here people.

Every morning I would wake up and start the quest for my eternal search for Tall Ramones. Mind you that I had never seen a pair in real life much less tried them on. The shoes are $*!@)#(* expensive and I’m not THAT into it to pay retail like some nouveau riche Chinese kid. So instead every morning I make the rounds. Ebay, Sufu, Sz, Styleforum, Yahoo! Auctions and Goodwill. This goes on for about 3-4 months and I bug my fellow comrades Tim, Jesse and Levi with incessant daily updates.

Finally, some guy posts them on eBay for 500 bucks. Here’s my chance, right?

Wrong.

Before I get ahead of myself, I can feel my spider-senses tingling in my arach-nads. I do my due diligence and ask him the most important question of all.

“Are the shoes authentic?”

He assures me they are. He wants to do the deal off eBay which is fine and as a side note; deals done off eBay save you 10%.

Back to the story, I confirmed with my consiglieres Levi, Tim and Jesse that PayPal will cover me no matter what, especially in the case when I’m scamming their sister company, Fee-bay.

I pay for the shoes. The seller jerks me around for a few days and tells me some silly story of not being able to ship because he’s on vacay or something. Fast forward 6-7 days. Maybe a week. Details unimportant.

I get a USPS priority box with dimensions of 8 x 4 x 4 or something. If you have seen Tall Ramones, there is no way they would fit in something so small. Dead giveaway number one. Second giveaway, the box smelled like a port-o-potty near Jesse and Walt’s meth lab. I am pretty sure if dog sniffing dogs smelled this package they would’ve called in the Marines because this box was made of ether. Let me reiterate, the box and whatever the hell was inside smelled like nuclear waste with a half life of 4 billion years. The box almost glowed green, that’s how horribly radioactive this cardboard box was.

I open the box to find the FAKEST pair of Tall Ramones. These fakes looked like fake Chuck Taylor All Stars with an elongated tongue. No markings on the inside, no box, no Rick Owens on the sole. Not to mention if you smoked a cigarette around them the entire city block would combust in a New York minute.

Then I did what any honest man would do with integrity, I stuck them back in the box, deep inside a closet and hid them from my unsuspecting wife (yes, I’m married).

The rest of the story reads like a college couple’s breakup transcript.

M: You sold me fakes you $*!@)#(* @!)*#!@$)*

The Seller of fake Rick Owens goods: I never said they were real.

M: Yes you did, I have the messages in my inbox.

The Seller of fake Rick Owens goods: Ahh man, if I knew you were going to dispute me, I wouldn’t have sold them to you.

M: If I knew they were fakes, I wouldn’t have $*!@)#(* bought them from you.

The Seller of fake Rick Owens goods: Just sell them for profit on eBay or something.

M: HELL NO. These are fake as hell. I’ll get a bag of jelly beans and not even the gourmet jelly beans from Jelly belly.

The Seller of fake Rick Owens goods: You can’t return them, I don’t have the money anymore.

M: Like %*@# you don’t. (At this point the PayPal fund freeze is in effect)

Long story short, I was able to return the shoes to seller of faked goods. Even after this debacle of a transaction I still lusted very much for the Tall Ramones.

Fast forward a few weeks, possibly months or days. Levi and I head to Mortar\Annex (where Andrew worked), some defunct Houston boutique, and the store just so happened to have a few pair of DRKSHDW Tall Ramones. Not mainline, but oh well, it would be nice to finally try on a pair and possibly buy them. So Levi tries them on and you have to remember that Levi is the son of Hedi Slimane so naturally it looks great on him. My wife makes a comment and says they look great on Levi. My turn to try them on. The shoes are so tall that I look like an Asian escort wearing thigh high boots. I look over at the wife and I catch a very subtle but disgusted face. My heart sunk and I gave up. Kinda. Sorta.

True Story,

Non-fictional account of “No Tall Ramones” David

P.s. – The initial draft of this post was written around the beginning of May 2014. By the virtue of destiny, I came across a brand new pair of new Tall Ramones for ½ of retail (featured in the header and below). I snatched them up in a heartbeat. I guess true love always finds a way.

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