Like Old Shoes, Niketown Stinks

Won’t you take me to … NikeTown? Won’t you take me to … NikeTown?

All the kids in the Bay Area are singing the same funky song, and so are all the kids visiting San Francisco. All the parents want to go there, too.

Even I wanted to go there, despite my distaste for that Nike swoosh and all it stands for: The shipping of American jobs overseas, the exploitation of foreign workers, the superstar ads that eat kids’ brains, and sneakers that cost the equivalent of three months’ pay for Indonesian workers who make them.

When I hear that Nike ad with kids of many races whispering, “I am Tiger Woods,” I keep thinking it’s the voices of small Asian women working for peanut shells on a production line getting arthritis installing flashing lights in $100 sneakers.

Those sneakers are plug ugly, too. They make kids’ feet look like they’ve been captured by UFOs, which is fitting, since their minds have been sucked in by tractor-beam ad campaigns.

The idea of adults wearing those formed-plastic battle cruisers on their feet is completely bizarre. Why not just attach emergency flashers to your ski boots and clump around in those?

As for wearing that Nike swoosh on your hat, why don’t you just pick a number from one to 30 and wear your IQ?

Won’t you take me to … NikeTown … so I can hate it.

Leave it to old politically incorrect me, but I hated NikeTown for all the wrong reasons.

I hated NikeTown because I thought it exploited San Francisco. People will take vacations in San Francisco to visit a shoe store instead of the Golden Gate Bridge.

The NikeTown in Chicago is the No. 2 tourist attraction. Chicago, a city of great museums, restaurants, sports and music, has become the city of broad arch supports.

In this town, the old T-shirts used to say, “My parents went to San Francisco and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”

Now the tourists are coming to San Francisco for the lousy T-shirts and sneakers.

As you ascend the escalator past the Winged Victory of Samothrace, you know that the multilevel, multimedia NikeTown is designed to be the Louvre of low-cuts.

Multiple TV screens flash film of Nike’s contract workers - not the ones working for $2.20 a day in Asia, but ones with agents who definitely show them the money.

The industrial-modern building could pass as a pretty fair museum of modern art in a middle-size city, but the giant photos, pretentious plaques and flickering images of beautiful, Nike-signed athletes like Carl Lewis, Mia Hamm and Jerry Rice aren’t the attractions.

No one pays all that much attention to the gigantic shoes of Michael Jordan in the Plexiglas case or all the autographed balls.

All that is mere frame. The eyes of tourists, kids and workers on lunch hour are on the art: Rows of shoes, including Air Jordan booties for babies, displayed sparingly around the edge of an atrium as big as Alcatraz.

Any store that can waste that much space on an atrium is making a lot of money. Thank you, exploited workers of Indonesia.

Lovingly arrayed between the sneakers is the Nike athletic clothing, which comes in more variety than any of us ever imagined in the old days of the plain, gray sweat shirt.

San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown wore a fedora with a Nike logo on NikeTown’s opening day a week ago, so it can’t be long before Nike has Third World workers cranking out three-piece suits bearing its logo.

The other day, when I mentioned to Brown that I was going to NikeTown, he said: “You wouldn’t believe it. Some of those Air Jordans cost $200.”

Asked if he owned a pair, he said, “No, I can’t afford them.”

Ha. Finally, he admitted he was waiting for Brioni to make sneakers.

Not so long ago, San Franciscans made fun of Fisherman’s Wharf as a tourist trap. At least it was real San Francisco and the T-shirts were souvenirs, not the entire purpose of the journey.

Now tourists can spend a week in San Francisco and be nowhere and anywhere at the same time. NikeTown is a logical progression from nowhere-anywhere vacation destinations like the Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood, which are T-shirt stores that also serve burgers.

Never mind the Harley store that only sells Harley gear and no Harleys (much safer that way), the Disney store and the Warner Brothers store.

What do people do with all those T-shirts? You know what happens to those glistening, flashing Nikes. After a while, they smell.

So do Dungeness crabs, but not if you eat them. They were one of the reasons people used to come to San Francisco. You can get Nikes anywhere.

Give credit to ordinary San Franciscans, though. While I was in NikeTown, a big, tough-looking young guy picked up a shoe, waved it at his friend and said this was the one for him.

Then he turned to me and said: “You can get it for $10 cheaper at Sportmart.”

You have to look for deals, what with all those jobs going overseas.