What sneakers does New York City buy? The Air Max 95 is still its shoe
New Yorkers bought the Nike Air Max 95 at more than twice the rate of the rest of the country this summer, and the Air Jordan 6 at almost twice. They bought far fewer Jordan 12s, and paid about the same as everyone else for the same pair.
New York likes to think it has its own sneaker taste. We wanted to see whether that shows up in what people actually buy, so we looked at every GOAT resale sale delivered to the five boroughs this summer and compared it with the rest of the country.
The answer is the Air Max 95. From July 2 to September 30, it made up 3.6% of New York City's sneaker resale sales against 1.5% in the rest of the US, a rate 2.3 times the national one. No other model family stood out as much. Second was the Air Jordan 6 at 1.9 times, then Salomon at 1.8 times.
The Air Max 95 is a borough shoe, not a Manhattan one
The 95's lead is spread across 86 different Air Max 95 listings, and it is not driven by one hot release. Two 2025 retros did the most: the women's 'Pink Foam' (180 New York sales, four times its national rate) and the 'Neon' OG (102 sales, 3.7 times).
Most of those pairs went to Brooklyn and the Bronx. Brooklyn took 65 of the Pink Foam's New York sales, the Bronx 48 and Manhattan 33. When we ran the whole analysis again without Manhattan addresses, the Air Max 95 came out at 2.4 times the national rate, the Air Jordan 6 at 2.1 and the Gel-1130 at 1.75. This is taste across the boroughs, not one store's orders.
New York bought the Air Max 95 at 2.3 times the rate of the rest of the country, across 86 different pairs.
Jordan 6s, Salomons and ASICS round out the list
The Air Jordan 6 is New York's second big over-index at 1.9 times, led by the 'Reverse Infrared Salesman' (129 sales, 2.8 times its national rate). Older Jordan retros did well generally: the Air Jordan 9 'Cool Grey' sold at 6.7 times its national rate on small numbers (33 pairs), and the 2024 Air Jordan 3 'Black Cement' at 2.6 times.
The rest of the list is lower to the ground. Salomon (1.8 times), the ASICS Gel-1130 (1.6 times) and the Gel-Kayano 14 (1.4 times) all sold more here than elsewhere, as did Nike SB Dunks (1.4 times). ASICS as a brand took 5.9% of New York's sales against 4.0% nationally.
| Model or brand | Share of NYC sales | Rest of US | NYC vs rest of US |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nike Air Max 95 | 3.6% | 1.5% | 2.3x |
| Air Jordan 6 | 2.5% | 1.3% | 1.9x |
| Salomon | 1.2% | 0.7% | 1.8x |
| ASICS Gel-1130 | 3.3% | 2.0% | 1.6x |
| Nike SB Dunk | 1.2% | 0.8% | 1.4x |
| Air Jordan 12 | 1.1% | 2.1% | 0.53x |
| Nike Air Max 90 | 0.3% | 0.5% | 0.53x |
| Converse | 0.7% | 1.1% | 0.66x |
What New York skips
The city bought the Air Jordan 12 at about half the national rate (1.1% of sales against 2.1%), and the Jordan 13 at 0.7 times. The Air Max 90, the Air Max 95's older sibling, also sold at half the national rate, and Converse at two thirds. The Nike Kobe 6 was at less than half.
The overall best sellers look like America's. Leaving out the one exception below, seven of the city's nine best-selling shoes were top-ten shoes nationally, led by the Travis Scott Air Jordan 1 Low 'Sail Tropical Pink' (346 pairs) and the Air Jordan 5 'Black Carolina' (333). The city's taste shows at the margins: what it buys more of, and less of, than everyone else.
New Yorkers do not pay more for the same pair
For 774 shoes that sold at least five times in the city, we compared each shoe's New York median with its national median. The typical shoe sold for 0.6% less in New York (95% interval 0.9% less to about the same). With this many shoes the gap is statistically clear, but it is a fraction of a percent. The New York premium, if it exists, is not in resale prices.
One shoe we left out
One shoe would have topped the list: the Bad Bunny x adidas Ballerina 'Vivid Red', with 556 New York sales. But 536 of them went to Manhattan addresses, against 5 in Brooklyn and 11 in the Bronx. That pattern looks like a single delivery point, such as a store or a reseller, not city-wide taste, so it is not in the chart or the tables.
New: see how New York compares with every other state and city on our interactive map of where America buys sneakers.
For more on the city, see our New York market page, what the Air Max 95 and Air Jordan 6 resell for now, and whether your size costs more in the size premium tool.
How we measured this
Methodology: GOAT resale sales with a US buyer location, July 2 to September 30, 2026. GOAT resumed buyer locations in July 2026 for its best-selling shoes only, so this covers popular pairs, and New York is compared with the rest of the US on those same shoes. New York City is the delivery cities New York, Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island and 43 Queens delivery names (the feed files most of Queens by neighbourhood): 21,175 footwear sales, against 363,065 in the rest of the US. For each of 55 brands and model families, the city's share of sales was tested against the rest-of-US share with an exact binomial test, and Benjamini-Hochberg correction across all 55 (every figure shown has q < 0.05). A family counts as over-bought only if the lead comes from 3 or more different shoes with none above half the count; individual shoes need 30+ city sales on 10+ different days. Same-shoe prices: the median of each shoe's New York median over its US median, with a bootstrap 95% interval and an exact sign test (280 sold higher in New York, 413 lower). Sales are counted by delivery address, and some addresses are stores, resellers or freight forwarders. This describes the summer's resale sales; it is not a forecast.
