It’s 7 p.m. More than 300 people are gathered outside a small boutique store in downtown Los Angeles, waiting for the doors to open the following morning. They want to be the first 250 customers to get a chance to win one of 16 custom-made Nike Air Zoom Kobe 1’s.

Imagine: An intricate, Jetson-ness-basketball sneaker design—purple, black and a dab of sun-like yellow, accompanied with a 50 pound shoe box that works like an elevator. With a push of a button the panel moves up and displays the sneakers.

And Kevin Macias, 18, of Fontana, Calif., is at the head of the line for this limited pair of Nike's, number seven to be exact. Macias arrived at 10 p.m. with some blankets, folding chairs, comrades, and stayed up all night while rain poured down on him and his friends to make sure no one cut in front of him. For his extreme dedication, Macias became one of the blessed 16.

“After a guy from the store told me I had won, I jumped up and screamed," said Macias, now a student at San Francisco State University.

Fashion-conscious shoe collectors seem to be popping up like rappers proclaiming they’ve been shot, but all of this is nothing new to the shoehead enthusiasts who live and breathe for limited and exclusive fashion.

“Yeah, I’m a sneakerhead because I’m addicted to shoes,” says Macias, a stocky skater whose wardrobe is comprised of $200 Evisu denim jeans, $50 Supreme t-shirt, and a pair of Nike SB dunk sneakers worth $150. “I’ll spend my last dollar for a pair of sneakers or hoody if I had to.”

The most popular sneaker still around is the Nike Air Jordan. Retail price ranges from $135 to $175 for the general release. Sneakerheads, however, are not just interested in buying the shoe. They are just as zealous about the rituals that come before the purchase.

On the eve of the much anticipated Playstation 3 release, Koroush Mehryar, 23 and seven other campers sit and wait in their collapsible chairs for the Nike Air Jordan V LS in olive suede. They have about 24 more hours to go.

"Shit they’re exclusive and I'm trying to get my hands on the first ones that come out," says Mehyar at his first campout.

"I have dunks and Air Forces, but when it comes down to what I cherish most, it has to be my Jordans," says Mehyar.

Sleeping on the street overnight may seem crazy, but it’s not to the tens of thousands of sneaker enthusiasts or "sneakerheads," as they like to call themselves.

Die hard shoe fanatics bring blankets and set up chairs, bearing the cold, sleeping in front of a specific boutique store just for a chance to get their hands on some exclusive kicks. But for sneakerheads, it's more than just a campout.

“Campouts are fun because you go to a specific store, meet people and sometimes create cliques,” says 24-year old University of California Berkeley graduate Kevin Palafox. “I actually had knee surgery, I tore my ACL and MCL and I was camping out. I just had to do it because I wanted the shoes real bad.”

Though rewarding, campouts can also be dangerous. There are rules and codes to the day and night and sometimes days of sleeping on the streets for some kicks. Derrick Newman, 27, of Berkeley, Calif. and student at SF State gives a little run down of the general rules and codes to go by:

1. Arrive early--it's your best chance of getting the size and shoe that you want.
2. Never tell anyone what size shoe you wear because you could get mugged
3. Always go with a friend or a group of people
4. Bring a care package, like food, chairs, blankets, games and clothes.

At a store called Fresh in Berkeley, young people are standing outside, some staring into the glass windows goo-goo eyed over the shoes, salivating at the second release of the independent kick brand, Greedy Genius’s, which are worth about $150.

Inside, Calvin Lau, 30, and Brandon Fong, 26, are chuckling at the frenzy, but they aren’t laughing at the kids because they know exactly how it feels to be on the other side. They used to campout for shoes, too.

"Brandon and I used to wait in line all the time and collect kicks and it has always been a dream of ours to open our own sneaker shop," explains Lau.

"It's for the love of the game, sneaker collecting, Calvin and I have been collecting for the last eight to 10 years now," said Fong.

Since then their dream has become a reality with the two young men opening a store dedicated to shoe fashion, and offering shoes and gear from independent brands as well as up-and-comers, like Alife and Homeroom.

"The reason why we started our store is because about two or three years ago at Nike Town in San Francisco they had the “Pharrell” and “Espo” release. Calvin and I thought we would go around 11 o'clock and be one the first people in line. We had no idea that it would be so crazy," says Fong. "It was that night that we met a whole lot of people and realized there is a real culture out here."

Eventually, the event would birth Fresh and be one of the few boutique stores specifically for street and sneaker culture in the East Bay.

For the last 30 or 40 years, both the young and old have been purchasing sneakers. They have been saving their lunch money, working extra jobs and begging their parents for more of an allowance to buy shoes that can cost anywhere from $60 to thousands of dollars according to auction websites, consignment stores and enthusiasts.

“In the 1970's, colorful sneakers made by Adidas, Puma, and Nike began to eclipse traditional Converses on of the basketball courts and sidewalks, and a fetish was born,” said the New Yorker in an editorial review for “Where'd You Get Those? New York City's Sneaker Culture: 1960-1987” by Bobbito Garcia, a sneakerhead, streetball legend and disc jockey. “New York City, a fanatical coalition of basketball players, graffiti writers, break-dancers, and rappers devoted themselves to the stylistic possibilities of these shoes, making cults of certain models, coloring and customizing them and devising elaborate lacing patterns.”

Campout frenzy is shifting into high gear now. With Christmas around the corner you can bet your underwear that at Niketown San Francisco there will be a line long as student's dissertation essay times infinity for the Nike Air Jordan V in white and red release on December 23rd.

Take for instance, NBA phenom Lebron James; his signature shoe of half red and white can only be purchased in San Francisco's Chinatown by way of a scavenger hunt (sorta like easter eggs)! Anybody who is interested in purchasing the sneakers must first go to Inside Nikebasketball website, read the clues and follow the directions and then perhaps be blessed with the King James basketball sneaker, but after paying a hefty $230 price tag and hoping that 23 people didn't received them before your arrival because there are only 23 being sold in a five day span.

But who wants to be homeless for a night to hunt for shoes? If not, the Internet is a shoeheads best friend because there are different online stores you can purchase the goods when stores run out.

Sneaker culture is here to stay, which is hard to say for some trends like pogs or Starter jackets. People want to own something different and be part of an exclusive group; political parties, special organizations and in this case a shoe fiend cult.

"People eat and breathe sneakers, it’s like their mission in life for the extreme sneakerheads," says Palafox. "If you think about a topic such as sneakers everyday that means you are involved in the culture."