Taller De Rafa Ships the Air Max Goadome Low With a Wrench in the Box

The Air Max Goadome Low gets its first collaboration on September 25, and it comes from a Bronx workshop that started out screen printing. Taller De Rafa’s version burnishes the leather until the toe reads coppery against a near-black collar, runs blue along the outsole, and ships with a metal speed wrench, three sets of alternate laces and a zippered pocket hidden on the tongue. Nike is calling the colorway Multi-Color and Black, which undersells it.

The Goadome is one of the few Nike boots that earned its place by competing directly with something made outside the building. Carl Blakeslee, a senior designer in Nike’s ACG division at the time, has said he sketched it in a Paris hotel room, and that his brief was explicit. Timberland’s 6-inch boot owned the street, and he wanted a Nike that could sit beside it rather than replace it. “Timbs and Goas should both be in my boy’s closet. Not one or the other,” he told Elitaste in 2008. The design approach he described was equally direct: “take some of the heritage Nike sneaker design language that we all know very well and make it work on a boot.”

It arrived in 2000 under ACG, with a visible Air unit, a leather upper and a lug outsole, and it found its audience in New York and the DMV rather than on a trail. The low-top is new. Nike cut the boot down for the first time in February 2026, twenty-six years after the original, and has run the Goadome Low through roughly half a dozen colorways since. It carries ACG branding on the midsole, though Nike merchandises it under the plain Air Max Goadome name rather than as an ACG product.

Taller De Rafa is a Bronx label run by siblings Rafa and Genesis Valverde, and the work is built on auto body shop references. The name itself translates as Rafa’s Workshop, and that reading runs through the whole shoe. The leather is burnished so the color shifts from near-black at the collar to a worn copper across the toe, the way a panel looks after it has been sanded back. The eyestays are hexagonal, shaped like bolt heads. Blue sits along the outsole and the midsole edge as though it were overspray rather than a color block. A metal speed wrench hangs off the pair as a hangtag.

Then there is everything else in the box. Three alternate lace sets come with it, a boot lace, a wide two-tone and a thin leather one. A zippered stash pocket is built into the tongue. The packaging is printed to look oil-stained. Gear Patrol also reports a pair of gloves and an owner’s manual with a crossword puzzle in it, though no other outlet mentions either, so treat those as unconfirmed.

Nike’s usual approach with a new silhouette is to run general releases until the shape reads as familiar, then hand it to a name big enough to move volume. The Goadome Low is seven months old and the first collaboration has gone to a Bronx studio most people outside New York have not heard of. Nike’s own newsroom listed Taller De Rafa among the cultural partners on the Toma National Finals at Bryant Park in June, which is the only brand-confirmed connection between the two and explains the relationship better than a release post can. This is a local partner being promoted rather than a celebrity being rented.

It also fits the shoe. The Goadome was drawn as an urban boot, its audience formed in New York, and the collaboration that finally landed on the low-top came out of a Bronx garage instead of an outdoor brand. That is a rarer kind of coherence than most Nike collaborations manage, and it is the argument for buying this pair over the general releases.

Retail is $185, which is more restrained than the contents of the box suggest. The standard Air Max Goadome Low has been $175 since the Black pair opened the model in February, the June SP went out at $200, and August’s Dot Pack landed at $185. So the collaboration is priced at the Dot Pack tier, ten dollars over a general release, with a wrench, three lace sets and custom packaging included. Resale on the general-release Lows has been soft. StockX has the Black averaging $140 against its $175 retail and the June SP last selling at $137 against $200, and the Taupe is the only one of the four showing a last sale above its own retail.

The Taller De Rafa x Nike Air Max Goadome Low releases September 25 on Nike SNKRS, listed for a 7:00 AM start, at $185. Style code is IU4876-200. SNKRS lists the colorway as Multi-Color and Black, while retailer line lists have circulated it as Mosswood Brown, Phantom and Metallic Silver. Aftermarket listings are tracking under IU4876-200 on GOAT and StockX.

Written by

The Sneakers Team

The Sneakers Team is the editorial desk behind becausesneakers, founded and edited by Nick Engvall. Nick has spent more than two decades in the sneaker industry. He built the original Eastbay Blog, led the first dedicated sneaker team at Complex, ran the first UGC and seeding programs at Finish Line, was employee number nine at StockX, and served as Senior Director at Stadium Goods. He hosts the Sneaker History podcast, and his first book, Small Luxuries: Sneakers, arrives in October 2026 from Motorbooks. Release details on this site are checked against the brand's own product information before publication, and anything we cannot confirm is labelled rather than stated.

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