Nike boots in the snow

Okay, so a lot of people are talking about these new Nike boots... many are butt-hurt because they think Nike will ruin snowboarding, blah blah blah, but I'm neutral on the whole issue. I think that Nike has a great research and development program so I figured their boots should be good, right? That's what my friend thought too, when he went to the Emage shop in Denver (http://www.emagenetwork.com) and purchased the Nike Zoom Force 1 in black.

He was pretty stoked on the fit and how well the boot seemed to be constructed. I tried it on too, and WOW- pretty damn good. I would definitely rock a pair but I usually like to wait until a new company is in its second year or so, so I can wait for them to tweak out their products a bit more and improve them and stuff.

Anyways, we went riding, they did good... so far, so good. However, by the second day he rode in them, we noticed that above the toes (green part in the boot pic above; remember his boots were black, diff materials probably), there was some sort of suede material... suede?? Are you kidding me? Suede and water is a no no... snow is water... impossible that a company with great R&D overlooked that. The snow stuck on the suede like magnet, in turn making his toes wet. That is bullshit. He used to have DC boots and they have 500+ days on them and his feet never got wet... my Vans have 300+ days on them and my feet also never got wet.

We figured it might be a warranty issue, so we went to Emage to see what they could do. They made some calls to Nike and shit, turns out it'll take six weeks to get them to Nike. Are they shipping the boots to fucking China or something? Needless to say, he wasn't happy about that. One other thing, when we were in the shop, when the salesguy went in the back to get the phone, he heard another guy working there telling the salesguy, "Oh, he rides for [another shop]" in a mocking/asshole-ish sort of way. My friend tried to see if Emage would give him loaner boots because well, come on, we don't live in Iowa where we ride 3 times a year. Emage was all like, "Oh, uh, well, no, we can't do that, sorry dude." He suspects it's because of what that guy said, about him riding for another shop but I think they are just a bunch of jackasses.

I don't know about you but if I spent a lot of money on boots and I needed to get them warrantied (after 2 days), and I go to get them warrantied through the shop where I got them, they better damn well give me some loaner boots.

I'm just disappointed in how Emage treated him, and he's more disappointed in the Nike boots. He really liked them too, except for the snow sticking to the suede stuff, making his feet wet. Hopefully it's a manufacture defect, but I don't know if we will find out thanks to Emage's employees' asshattery.