Twenty-something years ago, I walked into Mitchell & Ness on Walnut Street, and started a fashion and sports merchandise revolution. I took a bunch of officially licensed pro sports jerseys from the racks of a small, Philadelphia family-owned sporting goods store, and put them on some of the most iconic hip-hop artists and pro athletes of the time. Throwback became part of the culture — and its latest incarnation recently stepped foot into Pitcher’s Pub, where I run my restaurant, in the form of Jim Buck.
Listen to the interview edition here:
Jim Buck didn’t realize it, back when he started his Made by Buck custom sneaker business, but you can draw a direct line from the throwback colors and styles he uses in his custom shoes to my back-in-the-day collaborations with Nike, Reebok and NBA and NFL teams. Buck’s story resonated so much with me. He’s a walking brand — and I look forward to Made by Buck blowing up even more.
Buck grew up in Levittown, Bucks County, not a spot you think of for urban streetwear. He got inspired on the drive from his mom’s house to his dad’s in Jersey. Along the route was a lot of graffiti. “I never knew what it said at the time, but I was always, like, intrigued by it. The color schemes were so whacked out, just different than what you would normally see, always vibrant,” he says. Later on, he got into his own “mural painting,” then screen printing, airbrushing and painting. In 2013 he founded screen printing company Big Buck’s Prints and Design.
Buck started creating shoes during Covid. “I wanted a specific shoe, but it cost a little too much money, so I ended up finding that pattern online for like, $20. I just took the pattern and decided I was just going to basically learn how to make shoes myself — you know, just jumped all the way in and then eventually figured it out. It was a little bit delusional at first. But I think that’s where all that greatness comes from,” he says.
In 2023, Buck wanted to push himself to work harder, produce more shoes. So, he “challenged himself to make one shoe a month,” he says. “I went down to the wire with deadlines, had mental breakdowns no one knows about, just to hold myself accountable, to make sure I got everything done on time. I didn’t have a vision for any of the shoes before I made them. I just kept making stuff, making stuff, until it came together.”
His made-to-order designs use Nike Dunks soles and his own materials and take two to four weeks to make by hand. He has a whole line to rep Philly teams. “The Flyers [shoe], the toe of it feels like a hockey puck,” says Buck. “The Sixers one feels like a throwback Jersey. The Eagles one feels like a football to the touch. The Phillies one is actually my favorite one … The dark leather is based off my baseball glove when I was younger … Then the lighter [leather] is my dad’s glove. In the back, it has a baseball stitched into the heel, and each glove is touching the baseball, like to signify a father-son catch.” Prices for these designs start around $1,700.
He’s also put a book together of photographs Made by Buck shoes. There’s no title, “just an umbrella on the front, then what the umbrella means on the back,” says Buck. “I wanted it to be a signification of, like, Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
West Philly born and raised with a slosh of Brooklyn, Big Rube partnered with Mitchell & Ness in 2000 to help make it a global brand marketing and selling high-end throwback jerseys. He has been photographing Philly since 2009, including in a Daily News Column from 2011 to 2017. He’s also a chef, operating Chef Big Rube’s Kitchen seven days a week at Pitcher’s Pub in Manayunk, selling the best handmade food in a Main Street dive bar.
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