If you spent any time in a sneaker lineup in New York City in the past eight years, you saw Upscale Cracc there, probably somewhere near the front. The reseller, born Javier Osorio-Mejia, was a fixture on blocks where stores like Kith and Supreme drew long lines of entrepreneurial middlemen who approached flipping hype gear as a competitive sport. Cracc was short, with a big beard, a clean fade, and a slick, knowing smirk.
If there was a raucous crowd forming around the launch of a limited-edition pair of Nikes in the city, Cracc likely was at the center of it—either that or he’d already acquired the item and dipped before the masses had a chance.
Cracc was killed in New York’s SoHo neighborhood around 5:15 a.m. on Tuesday morning, the victim of a robbery, per the NYPD. He was 31. Sources told Complex that it happened while Cracc was heading back to his home in Bayonne, New Jersey after a night out. He was shot three times in the right leg, according to local news reports, and the killer fled in a black SUV.
Police blocked off the section of Greene Street between Broome and Grand where the fatal encounter took place, pushing mourners and curious onlookers to the edge of the block on Tuesday. From behind the caution tape, signs of a struggle were visible: Cracc’s white Range Rover sitting crooked in the street outside of the Stone Island store, his bloody green Off-White x Nike Air Force 1s still on the pavement.
“I’m standing here looking at the fucking pool of blood that’s dried into the sidewalk right now,” said Andre Arias, a New York-based reseller who goes by Sole Street. Arias heard that Cracc was robbed of his jewelry before he was killed.
At the crime scene, Arias was among a small crowd of men who came up reselling clothes and sneakers with Cracc. Their relationships were forged in hours-long lineups and loops across the country, in shared hotel rooms crammed with 50 pairs of sneakers. When there were no hotel rooms, Arias and Cracc slept in cars waiting for sneaker stores to open up. They were competitors, business partners, and close friends.
“He was one of us,” said Arias, who met Cracc at ComplexCon in 2017, where both camped in line in order to gain access to the show as early as possible. “We all go against each other man, but we’re a fucking community.”
Cracc bought and resold sneakers however he could. He figured out how to circumvent rules at releases, beating the systems stores put in place. He sold his wares hand to hand, through social media, and at Vault, a store on New York’s Lower East Side that he opened in 2022. The store closed in April, but Arias said Cracc was planning to open a new location on Houston Street before his passing.
Cracc’s friends were organizing a vigil at the shuttered Vault for Wednesday evening. The group included the reseller Gwalla, real name Jesus Ortiz, who stood side by side with Cracc in countless lineups. The two met at the Wall Street launch event for the Off-White x Nike collection in 2017, where they did a deal for a pair of Off-White x Air Jordan 1s and struck up a friendship. Later, they embarked on interstate missions for footwear, driving through the night from Texas to Florida to secure pairs.
Many of the people who gathered on Greene on Tuesday referred to Cracc as a brother. RV, a behind-the-scenes reseller who was best friends with Cracc, woke up that morning to his phone ringing off the hook. He made his way to Bellevue Hospital, where Cracc was rushed after the shooting.
“I saw my brother dead and everything,” RV said.
He has fresh memories of their capers. Their last big one was at Flight Club, RV said, where an exclusive, Oregon Ducks-themed Air Max 1 dropped in March.
“Everybody got one pair,” RV said. “Me and him ended up with 16, 17 pairs.”
Sneakers were not Cracc’s sole focus; all the people whom Complex spoke to mentioned his role as a father. They described him as a committed parent who spent much of his time with his two-year-old daughter.
“He was a changed man since he had his daughter,” Gwalla said.
Cracc’s name traveled beyond sneaker resale circles. Rappers who’ve spent decades chasing rare footwear knew him. “God bless,” wrote Fat Joe in an Instagram comment under a post about Cracc on the Complex Sneakers account. “He was a good one.” Bun B uploaded a tribute post on Instagram calling Cracc's death a huge loss.
Bun met Cracc in Houston in 2018 at the opening of Space Village, the sneaker spot run by Travis Scott’s DJ, Chase B.
When Bun would visit New York, he made a point of stopping by Vault. If Cracc wasn’t there, he’d see him at a drop somewhere across the United States, like at Travis Scott’s Astroworld festival in 2021 in Houston, where the reseller hauled merch out before the show turned tragic. It was not hard to run into Cracc at a sneaker launch, because he was everywhere.
“Any of those events where you already knew there was gonna be limited-edition sneakers—quickstrikes, tier zeroes—whatever category they were in, if they were super limited, these guys went,” Bun told Complex. “They went, and they went big.”
Bun said that beyond being a reseller, Cracc was an authenticator. If he was buying your stuff to flip, it meant something.
“If Upscale Cracc was in your line,” Bun said, “whether it was a sneaker drop, whether it was Supreme, whether it was Denim Tears—any of that fly shit—if he was in your line, your shit was popping.”
The sentiment bore out in social media reactions shared on Tuesday. Chicago designer Joe Freshgoods reposted an old video of Cracc lining up for one of his hat releases, adding an RIP message. The popular streetwear brand Hellstar reposted an image of him, crediting Cracc for creating awareness for its brand.
“This guy was a true hustler,” Bun said.
Cracc hustled through the pandemic, updating his business model in 2020 when the COVID-19 shutdown and social distancing threatened the livelihood of resellers who got their product at physical releases. When people stopped lining up and New York’s streets were empty, he sold shoes through Instagram, hosting streams where viewers would purchase slots on a digital roulette wheel to try and win a pair of coveted sneakers.
“There are so many different variations of that on so many different pages,” Bun said, “but he was the guy that came up with the roulette wheel.”
Even if you weren’t there to try to win a pair of shoes on the low, the streams made for good entertainment. Sneaker collector Abdul Fouzi remembers seeing Cracc run those shows, where he’d call out sales and orders with the intense energy of a stock broker making trades on Wall Street.
“That dude was one of a kind,” Fouzi said. “My first time meeting him, I couldn’t fucking believe it. He coulda been anything.”
That first time happened, of course, at a sneaker release. Cracc and other East Coast resellers made the trek to Chicago in February 2020 for NBA All-Star weekend, a stretch of days that hosts some of the biggest sneaker releases of the year. They fanned out across the city, chasing down shoes and finagling access in frigid temperatures.
That weekend, Virgil Abloh debuted his Off-White x Air Jordan 5 in Chicago. Fouzi watched Cracc organize a crew who found a way to go back for pair after pair, even though Jordan Brand’s launch policy officially only allowed one per customer. One person in the crew noted this to Cracc, who told his worker to go back and do whatever was needed to get the shoes. Cracc wouldn’t let him give up. He knew how to work the magic.
“It was one of the most motivational speeches I’ve ever heard,” Fouzi said. “I told him, ‘I’ll go out there and get you the fucking sneaker right now.'”
Upscale Cracc is remembered by his friends and business associates as a connector and a helper who made sure to put other people on. He was honorable and didn't back down. He was the star of impossible scenes—the guy smiling proud in a photo surrounded by an absurd number of Trophy Room Air Jordans. Those who bonded with him in the resale game eulogize him in superlatives: He was a legend, a GOAT.
“Through all the bullshit and drama,” Arias said, “we all love each other.”
