The phone has been ringing nonstop at Walter’s in downtown Atlanta. Everyone wants to know if the legendary shoe store will have the latest Nike Air Jordans, scheduled for release Saturday.
The answer? No.
Not every shoe store will be able to get the Air Jordan 11 Retro “Legend Blue” high tops, priced at around $200. Limited quantities of the shoes will mean even Santa Claus himself may not get his hands on them.
But hundreds in metro Atlanta already have lined up at the stores that will have the shoes to sell — just to get a lottery ticket. A lottery ticket that likely won’t mean anything for those holding them. A select few with the tickets will get a phone call if there’s a pair of shoes with their names on them, along with the infamous Michael Jordan image.
At the Finish Line store at Cumberland Mall, 600 lottery tickets have already been given out, a sales associate said Monday. There are still lottery tickets at the store, if you hurry. How many pairs the store will get is top secret.
Atlanta police haven’t responded to any problems related to lines for lottery tickets for the new shoes. But that’s not the case in other cities, where there’s been fighting outside stores while waiting on those lottery tickets.
Four people were arrested Sunday outside Eastridge Mall in Gastonia, N.C., after stores ran out of lottery tickets for the hundreds of people in line, the Gaston Gazette reported. As many as 30 officers were called to the mall to deal with angry patrons who had waited for tickets, the newspaper reported.
No arrests were reported in northwest Houston when chaos erupted while a crowd of nearly 600 lined up for a chance to get the sneakers, the Houston Chronicle reported. Rocks were thrown at the glass doors of one mall and a teenage girl was zapped with a Taser outside another mall, according to the report.
If you don’t have a lottery ticket, your chances of buying the shoes in a store are slim. But some will be available on Nike.com beginning at 8 a.m. Saturday. After that, check eBay, but expect to pay a pretty penny.
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