Part time punks: Joe Strummer London marathon photos by photographer Steve Rapport

Coming back from a little summertime hiatus today to post a Happy Birthday tribute to one of our favorite punk rockers ever. The legendary singer of The Clash Joe Strummer would have been 70 years old today. The man once drank 10 pints of beer and didn’t run a single step of training for the month leading up to the Paris Marathon! 🍺🏃‍♂️

These London Marathon images are from 1983 and were taken by the excellent rock n’ roll photographer Steve Rapport. Special thanks to Steve for permission to post these. The photos with the adidas sneakers are a little unclear but if you know what model they were hit us up on the contact page. RIP Joe Strummer.

Joe Strummer London Marathon 1983 images above by Steve Rapport.

Four Stripe Legends: Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys faux adidas SL76

Yesterday we posted an old school adidas SL76 sneaker ad which reminded me that we had a reader of the blog reach out awhile ago looking for sneakers that were like the SL76… except with 4 stripes. They passed along this photo of Dennis Wilson from the Beach Boys and Karen Lamm from 1977 right before Wilson released Pacific Ocean Blue. If you want to check out other 4 stripe celebrity sneaker photos we have also posted about Neil Young and Dale Earnhardt Sr and if you want to see a goldmine of celebrity sneaks you should check out the @trainer.spotting instagram account.

Eddie Van Halen's 1970's 'W' logo sneakers

October 2021 UPDATE: This mystery has been solved. The W logo sneakers below are Pro-Wings brand. Thanks again to =VH= fan Allen Garber who figured this out.

I have received a ton of emails and messages asking about these Eddie Van Halen W logo sneakers in the photo by Neil Zlozower below so I figured I ought to put up a post about them. A few of us have looked into these sneakers and brand for awhile and we have had a couple of leads but no official confirmation.

Image Credit: Eddie Van Halen photo by Neil Zlozower. You can buy prints from Neil’s website here.

My first best guess was vintage Weider Sport Shoes. There is a pair of these up on eBay right now here

Weider sport shoes W logo sneakers. Image credit to ebay.

The W logo on those is not as pointy as Eddie Van Halen’s sneakers so we pretty much ruled them out. Next up we were trying to figure out if a factory was bootlegging Mizuno’s old M logo and flipped it upside down like Kinney shoes did with the Nike swoosh back in the day.

Mizuno MR1 - Image credit to tokyosports.com.hk

But that theory proved to be wrong as the logos are still a mismatch.

The latest development as we were told from a friend on Instagram is that these are 1970’s Kmart brand sneakers, possibly Trax brand. Kmart used a bunch of different profile logos back in the day which you can see here. We have not spotted the W logo yet but are trying to find an old ad for it. Once we find it we’ll update this post.

A couple of final thoughts - first off, big shout out to rock n’ roll photographer Neil Zlozower for capturing these iconic photos of Van Halen. You can buy Van Halen and other great rock band prints from Neil’s website here. 🤘🤘

Finally, RIP to rock n’ roll legend Eddie Van Halen. The man was a one-of-a-kind shredder and Van Halen made some killer albums together.