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Skate shoes come in all types of shapes and sizes. Some are made for crusing, others for hard use. All skate shoes will wear and tear after a while. Here is a beginners guide, as written by adz04 for the skate shoe.
Lacing systems
Alot of shoes have two options for lacing-and in this case, the more the better. If you blow out or tear the lace eyelet, you wont have to buy another pair. Also, most skateboard shoe tongues are fatter than normal sneakers to provide added protection from guillotine boards snapping down on your dogs. This feature also allows you to lace more loosely and still have a snug fit. Beware though, some company's have seriously fat pads of foam in their tongues, and that can push down uncomfortably on the top of your feet if you like tying them up simi tight.
Ventilation
Stink, sweaty feet, and itchy fungus are the awesome by products of skating all day long in padded footwear. Nobody likes swamp shoes. Some company's are ingenious when it comes to getting air flowing through their product, employing mesh and seemingly space age materials. Other brands simply poke a few holes in the sneaker and your off to shake and bake. I have had to stop skating because of hotfoot, it sounds like a dumb complaint, but if your feet are uncomfortable, skating is gonna suck. No shoe is gonna stop the sock from getting wet during a hot new jersey summer session, but if you have a problem with reek feet, do everybody a favor and get ventilated.
Ollie area
Rodney Mullen, the inventor of the flatland Ollie, is the man responsible for skate shoes being designed with totally different features than any other type of footwear. Creating a trick that drags your lead foot up your board, across your griptape, is problem the worst thing you can do to material this side of sandblasting. Before airwalk put ridges of rubber on the ollie area, shoes often blew out in a couple days. Almost every brand has conquered this problem with triple stitching and designs that layer the material over the vulnerable area.
Price
Skate shoes may seem over priced, and some of them are, but in a group of unique footwear, don't drop out and buy a generic cheaper knock off non skate brand to save money. Any major skate sneaker brand has a team of pros that test their products while a knock off company just manufactures that look the same. These will blow apart quickly, and any money you thought you saved will go down the drain. Its sometimes hard to tell by looking, but the durability of the materials used in quality skate shoes has decades of shredding exercise behind it. Sometimes as simple as the quality of the thread and stitching and material placement can hold a shoe together for months. I have seen knock bust open in ten ollies or less. Forget about quality cushioning and protection those cost money, and the whole point of knock offs are to be cheap, but look the same.
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