Good Night! What Airwalk Got Right

In 1996, Airwalk dropped a commercial that is still living rent free in my head 30 years later.

A guy is climbing a massive speaker scaffolding at a punk show. With every step he takes up the tower, the camera focuses on his red Airwalk shoes. The crowd below is going wild.

He reaches the very top and launches himself into the air to crowd surf.

At that exact moment, the lead singer yells, “Good night!”

The crowd instantly disperses.

The guy face plants onto the empty floor.

It was brilliant.

But what made it even more brilliant was that it perfectly captured the culture of the moment.

The music. The humor. The attitude. The entire thing felt exactly like 1996.

Airwalk was not trying to predict where culture was going. They had their finger on the pulse of where it already was. They understood their audience so well that the commercial felt like it belonged to us.

Thirty years later, I still remember the shoes, the band, the joke, and how it made me feel.

The song in the commercial was so good that my best friend and I decided to track down the band. Keep in mind, this was 1996. We did not have Google. We had to do actual detective work.

Somehow, we found them.

Then we started going to their shows.

Then, somehow, we became friends with them.

Looking back as an adult, it is a little strange that two 15-year-olds were hanging around a punk band in their twenties and thirties. It felt cool at the time. In retrospect? A little…questionable. 😳😂

But through that connection, we found ourselves immersed in the Long Beach and Orange County punk and ska scene. We ended up around bands that would become iconic. No Doubt. The Aquabats. Mephiskapheles.

It is one of those strange chapters in what I call my “Forrest Gumpian” life.

But it reminds me of something important as a founder.

When you build something truly creative and unexpected, you do not just sell a product.

You create a gravitational pull.

You bring people together.

You start movements.

And if you get it right, people are still talking about it thirty years later.

P.S. After all these years, I found the commercial on YouTube.