Adisa Banjoko
Jul 20, 2024
The slippers that could literally save your life
As the sneaker craze of the 80s and 90s hit the streets of America, strange new street crimes began to occur. Young people were getting mugged and even murdered for their pricey kicks. Adidas, Nikes and even British Knights could get you gaffled – or made a victim – on the bus or at a hip-hop show.
The sneaker crime epidemic landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1990 with an expose titled “Your sneakers or your life.”
There was one shoe, however, that I never heard about anyone trying to steal: the Kung fu shoe, aka Karate shoes, aka Chinese slippers, aka the Bruce Lees.
These shoes became instantly iconic after the Kung fu cinema exploded into American homes in the 1970s and 80s and had kids screaming, karate chopping and throwing anybody and anything they could to look cool. Bruce Lee wore the shoes in a deadly fight scene in “Enter the Dragon,” the last movie he made before his death in 1973. The 51st anniversary of the movie will be August 19, 2024.
I suspect the main reason no one ever tried to take these shoes off of anyone was because they were cheap. But even if they weren’t, any person wearing them was likely to like fighting, so trying to take their shoes simply wasn't worth the risk. You might say Kung fu shoes saved people a lot of money, dissuaded street level attacks, and possibly even saved lives. In many ways, these sleek, lightweight shoes were the ultimate sneakers.
Just about every hood in America had a guy who wore these shoes. The stories about these guys varied. Some were said to have been in the military – Vietnam vets or just guys who were stationed overseas in Japan or Korea for a bit. In other cases, they were young guys who may have been bullied one time too many and took on the martial arts as a way of life – or at least that’s what they hoped to project.
Every kid I knew who wore them growing up in The Bay area in the 1980s studied some sort of martial art – even if their studies only consisted of mimicking the moves they saw actors making in the Kung fu flicks.
Eventually, the Kung fu films out of Asia spawned a subset of Black-oriented movies, such as “The Last Dragon,” the 1985 cult classic known for its "Kiss my Converse" scene, or characters such as Kill Moves in “Everybody Hates Chris” or Bushido Brown from “The Boondocks.”
Eversley Forte, a Brazilian Jiu-jitsu black belt and kickboxing instructor, was an early adopter of the shoes during the Kung fu movie craze. He still recalls buying his first Kung fu shoes at a martial arts store on Jamaica Avenue in Queens and wears a pair to this day.
“I purchased my first black Kung fu shoes at that store on Jamaica Avenue in Queens when I was around 13, and have worn them ever since when indoors at home or in the martial arts studio,” Forte says.
It all began with watching “Kung Fu Theatre” on the weekends growing up in New York City.
“Growing up in New York City, there was a weekend afternoon Kung Fu cinema on television featuring many martial arts films out of China and Japan,” Forte recalls. “I also went to theaters in Manhattan that would have martial arts triple features, for one very low price.”
His favorite films at the time included “When Taekwondo Strikes,” “Enter The Dragon” and “Five Deadly Venoms.”
“I have always loved martial arts films, but got more into them when I started seeing lead performers on screen that looked like me,” says Forte, who now has more than a dozen film credits himself.
In many of the ‘Blaxploitation’ films that Forte watched growing up, such as “Foxy Brown” (1974), starring Pam Grier, the hero was trained in some form of martial arts.
“Jim Kelly was the first Black guy I saw featured in martial arts films, with the pinnacle being his role in ‘Enter The Dragon,’” Forte recalls. “More influences were Pam Grier, who was a well trained martial artist, along with Fred Williamson.”
Those stars influenced Forte’s lifestyle and, of course, his choice of shoes.
“We tend to dress the same as those we follow in pop culture, and I was no different,” Forte says. “Like many kids even now, I also wanted to be like the Bruce Lee I saw on the big screen. These on-screen movie heroes influence how myself and others dressed and presented themselves in day-to-day real life.”
To get a better sense of how Kung fu shoes became legendary, I asked Gene Ching, a 32nd generation layman disciple of the original Shaolin Temple of China and publisher of the former Kung Fu Tai Chi magazine.
“Yea, those shoes are everywhere in any Chinatown, right next to the rubber nunchucks,” Ching told me.
He said the shoes became popular partially as a result of “minorities identifying with each other.”
“Bruce represented all people of color and that resonated with the Black community,” Ching says. “As a source of inspiration, blaxploitation honored Kung fu. You see this in films like ‘Shaft,’ ‘Black Belt Jones,’ ‘Foxy Brown’ and many more.”
This convergence of Black and Asian culture lives on in hip-hop. The legendary Wu-Tang Clan, for example, takes its name from “Shaolin and Wu Tang,” a 1983 martial arts film out of Hong Kong.
Ching notes that, Like Kung fu "uniforms," Kung fu shoes are "really just the attire of common folk in the 19th century."
One irony of Kung fu shoes is that “most martial arts are practiced barefoot," Ching observes.
“Only Tai Chi people use those shoes for practice nowadays, and only a few of them," Ching says. "Most just use martial arts shoes or sneakers."
If you happen to be in the market for a pair of Kung fu shoes – whether for practical reasons, nostalgia or a little bit of both – they’re not hard to find, whether online or at a martial arts store, for $20 or less. The soles can vary from a brown plastic that allows grip, but not a lot in the way of heel and arch support. Or they have more modern styles with a softer rubber base. They tend to be very durable despite being very light.
In today’s sophisticated sneaker culture, where new brands and types of shoes are being released every day, Kung fu shoes may never catch on like they did in the 1970s and 1980s. But thanks in large part to Bruce Lee and the Kung fu movies from the days of old, they will forever represent a rich part of the fusion of Black and Asian culture.
And if Kung fu shoes do return, given how young people are continually being robbed and killed for their pricey sneakers, it would be a welcome trend.
Adisa Banjoko is a black belt instructor at Ralph Gracie Jiu-jitsu, San Jose, California who has lectured at Harvard, Stanford and SF State on martial arts history and culture. He also was a co-producer of the short film “Rhythm of the Dragon,” about Bruce Lee’s impact on Hip-Hop.