Looks like Jay-Z’s Rocawear tractor-trailer ran out of gas.
Despite a much-ballyhooed announcement that the rapper — and miniscule part owner of the New Jersey Nets — would roll out a “new premium line” of apparel at a temporary store inside an 18-wheeler parked at the corner of Pacific Street and Fifth Avenue starting today, the truck never showed.
“The woman managing the tour says that they’re postponing until Thursday,” said Shayna McClelland, a spokesperson for the company that designed the pimped-out truck.
Funny, but we never got an e-mail.
But we did get plenty of advance notification about how the so-called “Rocpopshop” would park on Tuesday in front of the Atlantic Terminal Mall to showcase the brand in an attempt to “transport the customer into the Jay-Z and Rocawear lifestyle.”
That lifestyle apparently includes mohair sofas, suede walls, zebra-striped furniture, a 46-inch flat-screen TV, and video games — as well as racks of Rocawear’s newest garb.
It’s not the first delay for the store on wheels. The brand’s Web site had promised that the truck would arrive at “Atlantic Yard” a week earlier, but it never showed up then either.
“This is propaganda,” posted a would-be shopper named TJ on Monday. “I went looking for this Roc shop and its nowhere to be found.”
Journalist Norman Oder of the watchdog blog the Atlantic Yards Report linked the shop’s postponed opening to mega-developer Bruce Ratner’s sidetracked plans to build a publicly financed arena for the Nets, as well as 16-skyscrapers and 2,250 units of below-market-rate housing.
“Is everything [Atlantic Yards]-related delayed?” he joshed.
The Rocawear company did not get back to The Brooklyn Paper before its blistering online deadline kicked in.
Rocawear’s “Rocpopshop,” corner of Pacific Street and Fifth Avenue, April 16–May 3, 10 am–9 pm.