Street culture & its Monarchy

When we talk about the leading fashion distributor for urban/modern street culture wear in South Africa one name always seems to come to mind and that’s “Sportscene” and without a doubt why wouldn’t it be with artists such as @Nasty_CSA & @NadiaNakai previously and currently collaborating with the clothing distributors in-house brand Redbat and now with one of the largest Sportscene stores in Sandton City that I know of; they’ve built a hub for modern street culture with its store housing facilities such as an indoor basketball court, sneaker cleaning station, tattoo studio and the crown jewel of the store its Sportscene recording Studio which most of us didn’t know of till now.

Though there are other fashion distributors that only specials in street wear or sneaker wear such as Shesha, shelflife, The Cross Trainer, X Trend and Dipstreet etc. they seem to be in the shadow of the monarchy Sportscene has built in dominating South African street culture by being a desired destination store to go to when shopping for street wear and the latest trends while other stores seem to either be the second or last destination store a person between the ages of 13 – 25 would walk into.

Since the focus of this article is on Sportscene I shall be honest in stating that I have been to the Sportscene in Sandton City and I must say they do have wonderful employees that are both approachable and have excellent mannerisms towards customers but this is where I shall draw the line and express the disappointment and disgust while offering constructive criticism. While Sportscene might be dominating street culture as we know it and has introduce their weekend turn ups; it’s still pitiful to observe how some of their employees held responsible for their Sportscene studio have turned it into a corrupt government that only lets those they deem worthy enough a chance to use it with a system that only allows those fortunate enough that perhaps knows someone to gain access to the studio creating a “ I know through a friend of a friend system”; this is what I was told by a reliable sources after trying to reach out through their blog which was no help at all cause it directly takes you to their Instagram page.

And I for one would be the first to say I shall not compete with 551k follower direct messages because of a website developer that failed to make both the blog and website user-friendly. Why is it when browsing on the blog it’s easy to gain access to all the other facilities offered at the flagship store in Sandton City but trying to gain access to the studio becomes a competitive sport between Instagram direct messages from fans of the Sportscene brand and creatives that genuinely would like to use the recording facility; why not just develop an interface that interacts with the creative while making it easier to submit an application requesting the use of the studio facility.

Though I am yet to see more female voices use the Sportscene recording studio facility it is understandable given the information that the studio and flagship store is fairly new being opened in September 2019 but it has been a few months now and the studio seems to be genre discriminatory by only releasing content that seem to be based on trap or hip-hop music only so far without accommodating for other genres( and if you want to argue that hip-hop culture doesn’t stem from other genres then you have been disqualified from this conversation piece). I have been through their blog, website and social media pages doing extensive research to try and find other genres and women they’ve worked with in their studio but I was unsuccessful in gathering that information because there isn’t any and the information I found wasn’t even relevant or helpful.