It’s how he gets his kicks.
A Long Island phys ed teacher and football coach is the most popular guy in school thanks to his custom sneaker hobby and side hustle.
“I tell my students at the beginning of the year that I have over 90 pairs of sneakers. I wear a different pair to school every day — and that gets me through Thanksgiving.” John Barth, a gym teacher at Port Washington High School, told The Post.
“I notice whenever I make eye contact with a student, they’re always looking down at my shoes,” said Barth, the Vikings varsity girls flag football coach and head football coach for Webber Middle School.
Thanks to word of mouth, Barth has made more than 50 custom sneakers, cleats, and even lacrosse gloves with team names and other logos for youth athletes and some coaches on Long Island.
“I started with cleats for my kids,” said Barth, a 47-year-old father of two from Wantagh. “My son would be playing first base, and a kid would look down and say ‘wow, really cool cleats!’ and it just grew from there.”
When Barth began his business JCKicks during the lockdown of 2020, he didn’t have much artistic experience beyond sketching as a kid.
What he did have, however, was a lifelong passion and the drive to learn the craft.
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“I still remember the first pair of Jordans I got in the eighth grade. I’ve loved sneakers my entire life,” Barth said.
“During Covid, I taught myself how to design through YouTube videos.”
He first tested a pair of his own Adidas in a blue and yellow hydro-dip — a tub of water with a design superimposed that sneakers get dunked in — and realized his proof of concept was solid.
Slowly but surely, Barth began converting a corner of his basement into a workspace with cutting-edge airbrushes, a vinyl printer, a heat gun, a handy work bench, and other sneaker paraphernalia that ran upward of about $1,000.
“When pieces started showing up at the house, my wife figured out that I was putting a little money into my hobby.”
He now displays his designs on his Instagram page and charges customers between $150 and $235 based on their customatization requests.
As he started getting more serious, Barth’s graphic designer sister — a graphic designer by trade — started showing him the ropes and some pro tips like using technology to align logos on vinyl.
Barth, who spends between six and eight hours meticulously painting and stenciling, quickly took the idea and ran with it.
He gladly spends his spare time with an exacto knife, cutting and transitioning the designs from vinyl paper to shoes.
Afterward comes airbrushing, hand painting, and more microscopic detailing.
“It can be tedious, but I really do find it relaxing,” Barth, who has shipped shoes to customers across the country, said. “I just play music and can stay down here for hours.”
His work attracted a close friend of former Mets shortstop Jose Reyes, who recruited Barth to make a swanky pair of kicks for his birthday a few years back.
“He loved them apparently, and the greatest part was that I saw shortly after he was gifted them, Reyes was wearing them on vacation,” Barth said.
When Nike collaborated with Ben and Jerry’s in 2020 with a shoe that first went for a few hundred dollars — it now sells for nearly $2,000 — Barth made a homemade replica with bottles of paint that cost less than $10 to surprise his wife.
“I use my family now to bounce designs and ideas off of,” he said. “When they look really impressed, that’s how I know I did a good job.”
Currently, he’s designing a “Simpsons” shoe, Barth’s favorite show, for himself as a labor of love.
It is sure to be a hit around the halls of Port Washington.
“Students always ask me if I can make a pair for them,” Barth said. “I’m always flattered, but I say, ‘You have to get your parents to say yes first.’”
