FIVE TEN NIAD LEAVES THE WALL AND HITS BRAIN DEAD EQUIPMENT

Brain Dead Equipment puts the Five Ten NIAD and a run of apparel on sale Friday, November 6, 2026, at 10am PST, nearly four months after the same shoe was a prototype that left Oakland only on the feet of climbers. In July nobody could buy it. This week the label is selling it alongside the gear line that already sells chalk bags to the same crowd.

July 17, a Concrete Slab Under Highway 24

The earlier chapter is the reason this release reads the way it does. In July, Brain Dead hosted climbing meetups at the Golden Gate Wall Traverse in Oakland, a cemented slab bouldering wall beneath Highway 24, and gave prototype pairs of the adidas Five Ten NIAD to climbers who finished the route. The first announcement called it the label's first project with Five Ten's technical climbing line, after two years of collaborations limited to adidas Originals silhouettes such as the Stan Smith and Forest Hills.

The sessions closed on July 17, and the follow up noted that the shoe still had no retail listing and no price. That is the receipt. The NIAD went from a giveaway that cost climbers a 200 foot traverse to a product with a drop time.

What NIAD Means and What the Shoe Is

NIAD stands for Nose In A Day, a nod to climbing The Nose on Yosemite's El Capitan inside 24 hours, one of the sport's benchmark speed ascents. The shoe already exists at retail as a flat lasted climbing shoe built for edging, with a soft microfiber upper and Stealth rubber over the toe for hooking.

Five Ten itself has a long history. Charles Cole, a climber and engineer, founded it in 1985, and adidas bought it in November 2011 for a reported $25 million. Stealth rubber, the high friction compound Cole developed in 1986, is the reason climbers trusted the brand, and Five Ten footwear was on the podium at the Tokyo 2020 Games, where Janja Garnbret won sport climbing gold and Miho Nonaka took silver. Brain Dead has not published which parts of the build carry over unchanged to its version, so the colorway and materials stay unconfirmed until the product pages open.

The Equipment Line Has Been Building Toward This

Brain Dead Equipment is the in house gear line of the Los Angeles label that Kyle Ng and Ed Davis started in 2014. The line already sells a chalk bag at stores, built for the Old LA Zoo bouldering routes in Griffith Park. A shoe is the obvious next piece of climbing equipment, and it arrives with apparel in the same release.

The label has also spent the autumn on another adidas project. The adidas Brain Dead Bowling shoe reissued a 1978 adidas bowling design in Cheetah and Snakeskin colorways and went on sale October 8 after earlier listings for August 1 and September 17. Brain Dead's autumn arrivals also reached Dover Street Market Los Angeles and the DSMNY E Shop on October 6, so the label is selling through retail and its own store at once. Two adidas releases within a month, one a bowling shoe and one a climbing shoe, show the partnership running on two tracks.

Who Shot the Release

The credits come with the release. Tristan Bangle served as creative director and photographer. The video credits name nolanmen as director of photography with jadenmen assisting, and the talent list names five people by their handles: omarmurga_, spencer.foltz, pipyopi, lithai.march and kris_kaekul. The music is by wet.pedestrian. Brain Dead updated the credits after a name was missed, with the line "Tristan forgot someone haha."

Putting a named photographer and a named music act on a campaign for a climbing shoe fits the label's habit of treating gear as culture.

Friday, 10am PST

The release time is 10am PST on Friday, November 6, and Brain Dead gave no store, price or quantity with it. Those details will matter, because the earlier Oakland pairs were prototypes and the retail version has to answer whether it is the same shoe.

The pattern to watch is the one Brain Dead set in July. The label made a shoe feel scarce by tying it to a physical task, then moved it to a clock. The same Equipment line that sold chalk bags to boulderers now carries the shoe those boulderers were climbing for.