“Bring me my shoes”

“I just want to say to the folks who did this bring me my shoes,” Hoffman said, speaking to the media inside A.shoe.affair, his store on Greenwood Avenue in downtown. Bethel.

Police said they were investigating the incident, but so far have not disclosed any details of the alleged theft.

The shoes feature a red and green striped pattern that evokes the sweater worn by Freddy Kreuger in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies – as well as blood stains on the accents of the shoe. The design resulted in a cease and desist letter from New Line Cinema, according to Hoffman, forcing Nike to destroy the shoes. But a handful survived.

Hoffman said one of the pairs he bought was “oiled,” meaning workers threw the shoes in a pile and doused them with a lighter liquid to burn them – he said the shoes had burn marks on them – but were somehow removed from the pile and saved. The others were new sneakers with a “seller’s sample” with a sticker on them.

“This shoe was basically the rarest shoe you could find – because it wasn’t in the oil heap, it wasn’t touched,” said Hoffman, standing near where There used to be a display case containing the shoes. “Each pair has its own story; it’s a piece of history, ”he said. “What they did was they took a piece of history that I brought to our city.”

He said people who came were able to see a pair of shoes that no one else had, comparing them to museum pieces he once wanted to pass on to his children.

Hoffman said he bought the shoes months ago and just finished paying for them. He opened the business about 13 months ago, fulfilling his dream of opening the kind of shoe store he wanted.

“I sacrificed everything for these shoes, these people have no idea how much I worked to get these things,” he said.