Nardwuar just dropped a sneaker collab with Nike

Nike has a long history of sneaker collabs with some of the biggest names in sports—legends like Michael Jordan, LeBron James and Serena Williams—but its latest collaborator isn’t an athlete: it’s a Canadian journalist. Nardwuar the Human Serviette, the former MuchMusic interviewer who built his career surprising musicians and celebrities with deep-cut encyclopedic knowledge of their lives, is releasing his own quirk-coded shoe, a Nike SB Dunk, on December 6.

Landing in shops early next month, the sneaker is appropriately Nardwuarian, wrapped in a cranberry red, royal blue and evergreen tartan pattern with a fluffy pom pom stuck on both tongues—a nod to Nardwuar’s signature tam o’ shanter cap. His call-and-response catchphrase is immortalized in the soles of the shoes: one reads “doot doola doot doo,” the other “doot doo.”

Related: Drake’s best interview—Nardwuar gets the rapper to giggle, choke up and talk masturbation

The collab cements Nardwuar’s enduring status as a Canadian cult figure with the uncanny ability to speak to both counterculture and mainstream audiences. The media landscape has shifted drastically since he started interviewing in the late ’80s, yet Nardwuar has remained defiantly loyal to his punk meets technicolour Scottish golfer look and his ethos of playful-yet-solid gonzo journalism. It may feel like a big corporate brand is co-signing his persona purely for hype (and sure, that’s part of it), but it’s also a sweet affirmation that loud, proud and weird need not capitulate to the drift toward glossy, risk-averse content.

Nardwuar is bringing his wholesome shtick to Toronto on November 23 for his upcoming Video Vault Tour, where he shares a series of rarely seen footage from his personal archives. Tickets are already sold out, but the man himself will be making a sneaker-themed appearance at Adrift on Spadina for the shoe’s official launch on November 24.

Doot doola doot doo…doot doo!

Related: MuchMusic’s new YouTube channel is a time machine back to the glory days