SAN ANTONIO — San Antonian Jake Danklefs has created custom sneakers for Olympians, rappers and The King, LeBron James.

He gets about 20 requests a day, including one last week from a California prison. A person who has been incarcerated for 12 years is to be paroled soon and asked for those first steps of freedom to be in a pair of Danklefs' shoes.

“People see sneakers as art now,” Danklefs said. “And they can show their art wherever they walk.”

Danklefs, 29, customizes sneakers to give soul to the soles. For between $300 and $1,000 a pair (and you must provide the shoes), he'll repaint the shoe and can add features with decals or laser engraving. But he rarely changes the material because the shoes still need to be wearable.

Consider it an extreme makeover for your feet.

Sneaker collectors and aficionados, aka “sneakerheads,” are part of a community rooted in hip-hop and skateboarding culture that has expanded to include collectors and fashion fans. The roots go back to at least the 1980s and that decade's break dancing or “b-boy” culture. About 60 percent of Danklefs' customers are from Europe and Asia.

“There's definitely a rush to finding the perfect pair of sneakers,” said local shoe collector Norm Dawson, founder of The SA Sneaks Up shoe show, which will take over Cowboys Dancehall at 2 p.m. Sunday. “It's always been a part of culture that you can express yourself with the shoes you're wearing, and a lot of us channeled that through sneakers.”

More Information SA Sneaks Up shoe show What: Eighth-annual sneaker show, featuring more than 100 booths of rare and vintage sneakers from Nike, Air Jordan, Adidas Puma and others. Some of the sneakers displayed cost $3,000 or more. When: 2-7 p.m. Sunday Price: Free, all ages Where: Cowboys Dancehall, 3030 N.E. Loop 410, 210-646-9378. Also: The show will have DJ sets by DJ Donnie Dee and DJ Vicious. On the web: www.sasneaksup.com

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Sneaks Up, in its eighth year, drew a crowd of 4,500 sneakerheads last year as a cottage industry of rare “kicks” has become big business. Houston's Sneaker Summit and Dallas' Kixpo (held on the Cowboys Stadium field) both draw crowds of about 10,000.

Dawson owns about 300 pairs of sneakers, a collection that has grown so large that his wife finally objected when he tried to put some sneakers in the closet of their newborn baby's room.

Brands such as Nike release limited-edition styles of their shoes and have caused riots outside of stores. The most popular items, rare Air Jordans and the Air Yeezy (designed by Kanye West) can sell for more than $3,000 a pair.

According to the New York Times, one sneaker vendor turned down an offer last week for his pair of Nike Air Yeezy 2 “Red October” sneakers autographed by West. The offer price: $98,000.

“They're not like baseball cards, they weren't meant to be collected,” Danklefs said. “Ultimately, it's a thing that protects your feet while you're walking.”

But they're also considered art and fashion — and customizing already collectible kicks takes them to the next level.

For LeBron James, Danklefs customized the NBA star's signature Nikes to commemorate his second NBA championship with the team in 2013. He gave the shoes golden paint, along with trophy decals on the tongue of the shoes and even insoles with a photo of James' face.

“My friends and I are all Spurs fans; so it was a weird feeling wondering if I should root for LeBron (in the NBA Finals),” Danklefs said. (None of the Spurs has become a client). “After the Heat won, someone said, 'At least one of us is benefiting from this.'”

James posted a photo of the shoes on Instagram, which has gotten 195,000 likes. Then James wore the shoes to Miami's media day.

A month later, James was on the cover of Sports Illustrated for Kids wearing Dank Customs.

Now an Asian website is selling a replica version of Danklefs' custom shoe.

“Someone is ripping off his shoe,” Dawson said. “That's when you know he's done something big.”

Because of the connection with James, Danklefs has since designed six shoes for Heat assistant coach and former NBA All-Star Juwan Howard.

Kevin Kramer, who organizes a sneaker show in Cleveland, will be in San Antonio for Sneaks Up. Kramer said online marketplaces and message boards have been the biggest contributor to the industry, as sneakerheads can hunt for rare finds together online and debate new releases. The forum for solecollector.com has more than 400,000 members.

“The online presence has really driven the culture,” Kramer said. “I remember when it was a couple forums. Now it's an industry. There are these sneaker blogs that are clocking millions and millions of views a month now.”

Unlike most artists, Danklefs' productions still have to be wearable and functional. He's done spikes for Justyn Warner, an Olympic sprinter from Canada who medaled at the 2013 World Championships, and San Diego Padres first baseman Yonder Alonso.

Danklefs, an East Central High School graduate, recently customized a pair of sneaks for a local rapper who wanted his shoes to resemble his favorite bottle of malt liquor. He also once received a request, which he declined, to depict a sex act on a pair of Nikes.

“I've gotten a lot of people asking for weird things on shoes,” Danklefs said. “When I tell them what it costs, they don't usually follow through with it.”

Danklefs quit his job as an energy-efficiency assessor to customize shoes full time a year ago. He has a six-month waiting list, with about 50 pairs backordered.

He charges based on the amount of labor he'll do on the shoes. Danklefs will work on about seven pairs of shoes at a time, with most projects taking between six to 10 hours. The LeBron shoes, which he scrapped and restarted twice, ended up taking about 60 hours.

The website Kicks on Fire has praised him, saying, “as far as custom kicks go, Dank Customs is in a class of its own.” Sneaker Freaker, an Australian magazine, called Danklefs “one of the best in the game.”

“His paint jobs are so clean that you'd think those were the factory sneakers,” said Jake Ferrato, a customizer based in Washington, D.C., and known as JBF Customs. He charges a minimum of $1,000 per pair.

The kicks craze has been bewildering to Danklefs' mother, Jody Danklefs, who assumed that her son would outgrow his obsession with shoes.

When he was 6, Danklefs began drawing running shoes and mailing his ideas to Nike. He still remembers the Nike headquarters mailing address in Oregon.

Danklefs always saw sneakers as an art medium, and when it came time to paint on canvas, he used nail polish to paint the canvas on Vans shoes.

His passion continued to evolve, but his parents still didn't believe sneaker customization could be a full-time job.

“Our first reaction was 'Shoes? No way. Get a real job,'” Jody Danklefs joked. “We don't get it, but we see there are people who really appreciate his art. We'll go to a sneaker show and people will tell us, ' I don't think you realize who he is.'”

Danklefs hopes to work at a major shoe company some day. He pops in a video from Christmas 1996, when he received a pair of Nike Air Penny II shoes, the signature sneaker worn by then-basketball player Penny Hardaway. He ripped open the box, took out one shoe, and just stared at it for about 20 seconds before trying it on.

He says his dream would be for a kid to have the same reaction to one of his designs.

“Some of the best art is just hanging in some rich person's house, and nobody can see it,” Danklefs said. “But everybody can identify with sneakers, because everybody's worn them.”