NIKE SHOX BB4 RETURNS TO THIRD OF JUNE IN BLACK AND LAPIS

Nike is putting the Shox BB4 OG back on shelves in Black and Lapis this Friday, August 28, and the release is not running through SNKRS alone. Third of June, a West Village menswear shop with no line and no raffle, is selling the pair in store and by email order, the way independent boutiques moved sneakers before an app decided who got to buy them.

The BB4 is not a cautious retro. It is Nike reviving the shoe most responsible for turning Shox into a punchline, and betting a boutique reissue reads as taste rather than nostalgia.

December 6, 2000. Vince Carter Leaps Over Frederic Weis.

Nike designer Eric Avar built the original Shox BB4 as a space suit for the foot, four visible cushioning columns stacked under the heel like a rocket engine. It released on December 6, 2000, and Vince Carter wore it that September at the Sydney Olympics when he jumped over French center Frederic Weis for a dunk that still gets replayed as the Dunk of Death. For one year the BB4 was the shoe. Then the columns proved heavy next to the foam that came after, and Shox spent two decades as a punchline before Nike started dusting it off again this year.

The returning pair, style code IR1984 010, keeps black leather across the toe, tongue and eyestays, metallic silver on the side panels and heel, and lapis blue running through the midsole and all four Shox columns. Retail is $190, the same premium Nike put on the Shox Z Calistra in July before that pair sold out at Bodega in a single week.

The Black and Lapis colorway is not even the BB4's first comeback of 2026. Nike already retro'd the Olympic colorway, the pair Carter wore in Sydney, back in June, months before Third of June got this second pair. Two BB4 retros inside three months is a real signal that Nike sees more demand in the archive than in whatever replaced Shox after 2003, back when a marketing campaign called Boing tried to make the bounce itself the pitch and consumers eventually moved on to lighter foam cushioning instead.

Third of June Sells Sneakers Like It Is 2003, Not 2026.

Third of June operates out of the old Maison Margiela storefront at 801 Greenwich Street, a menswear shop that treats sneakers as a small surprise inside the rack rather than the whole business. Nike Air Zoom Huaraches and retro Jordan 13s already move through the space in low numbers, and the BB4 restock follows that same script. No SNKRS entry, no shock drop countdown. Anyone who wants the Black and Lapis pair on Friday either walks into the Greenwich Street store or emails the shop directly to place an order, a distribution method most sneaker brands abandoned once app based raffles took over.

Nike sent the Shox Z Calistra to Bodega in Boston with the same logic in July, letting a single boutique carry a story the SNKRS app never touched. Third of June built its name on that same mix, stocking menswear alongside Air Force 1s and Jordan 13s that show up unannounced rather than on a release calendar, so a customer walks in for a jacket and leaves having noticed the shoe wall.

Nike Has Already Run This Shox Play Twice in 2026.

This is not Nike's first specialty placement for the Shox family this year. In May, Martine Rose folded new Nike Shox MR4 mule colorways into her SS26 show inside a disused Job Centre in Lisson Grove, putting Shox cushioning on a runway instead of a court. In July, the Shox Z Calistra landed at Bodega in Metallic Silver and Pearl Pink for $135, a women's exclusive that sold through in under two weeks. The BB4 OG is the third Shox silhouette Nike has routed through an independent retailer this year, and the first to go back to the original, unmodified 2000 build instead of a reworked update.

Answering an Email Buys the Original, Not a Rework.

Buy this one if the original mattered to you. The $190 price sits above the $135 Bodega charged for the Z Calistra, but the BB4 OG is the unaltered 2000 shoe, not a reworked silhouette, and Third of June is not printing a second run. Skip it if the four exposed columns never made sense on your foot the first time around. Vince Carter's Olympic dunk sold the BB4 once already; whether an email inbox can do the same job SNKRS built an entire app to replace is the actual test Friday.