Pointe shoe unfit to wear in situations other than informal practice or rehearsal. Under moderate usage, a pair of pointe shoes will typically last through ten to twenty hours of wear. For dance students, this often translates into weeks or months of serviceable use from a pair of pointe shoes. Professional dancers typically wear out pointe shoes much more quickly; a new pair may wear out in a single performance. As a result, most professional ballet companies provide shoe allowances for their dancers to defray the cost of frequent shoe replacement. The lifetime of a pointe shoe depends on many factors, including:
Air Force (shoe) retailers used to be prohibited by Nike who had restricted supply of the sneaker. Nike now allows retailers to offer the shoe for sale online. As a performance shoe, the AF1 is still used for street play as well as for professional play. NBA players Jerry Stackhouse (who now wears Adidas) and Rasheed Wallace have worn AF1s on court. Nike Air Force 1s were originally considered the favored shoe of inner-city youth, especially in Harlem, New York; hence the nickname "Uptowns". Rapper Nelly and his group, St. Lunatics, collaborated on a 2002 single entitled "Air Force Ones" about the shoes.