by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

“Rocky’s Chuck Taylors? They’re available. Uma Thurman’s Asics Tai Chi Tigers in Kill Bill? They’re available. Forrest Gump’s Nike Cortez? They’re available.”

Montrealer Al Cabino is rattling off a list of famous cinematic footwear, but it’s one pair in particular that obsess him—the futuristic Nikes worn by Marty McFly, Michael J. Fox’s character in Back to the Future Part II. “They were never made available to the public,” say Cabino, “so they’re really the holy grail of movie sneakers. There is a street legend that says that in 2015, Nike will come out with them, but there are a lot of people who don’t want to wait ten years.”

How many people? Over 3,500 at this point, judging by the number of signatures on Cabino’s online petition, informally dubbed Operation McFly.

The petition is peppered with prominent names from the demi-monde of sneaker nuts, among the signers from all over the world, and suggests a bold new streak in buying stuff. Cabino calls it “sneaker activism,” which might rankle a few keffiyah-clad college commies, but the term is accurate. This is consumerism as an active, not passive, process.

While it remains to be seen whether Nike’s brass will play along, the media certainly has. Beyond plugs on dozens of kick-culture and street-style blogs, Operation McFly has earned attention from MTV, Maclean’s, Boston Phoenix, Globe & Mail and Washington Post—the latter, in vestigial Woodwardian fashion, pushing extra hard to find out if Cabino isn’t simply a deep-cover guerrilla marketer for Nike.

He isn’t, but his preference for a degree of anonymity begs the question. The chatty twenty-something won’t even do photos, saying that the project, not its pilot, is the star. “There’s no game being played, this is who I am. It’s just that I like the mystery. I’m not there to get the spotlight.”

The spotlight is there to get him, though, and has been since he started pushing the shoe-business envelope. “I’ve been involved for the last two years with sneaker culture. There was a very small, Australian magazine called Sneaker Freaker, that’s how everything became serious. I said, I want to get involved with this publication, I want get involved with this new sneaker media. I think I can make a difference.

“The immediate difference was, I went to the top. I contacted Adidas and figured a way to get myself to their headquarters. Ten days after saying, alright, I’m getting involved in Sneaker Freaker, I’m on a plane, going to the secret—secret!—Adidas headquarters. Everyone in sneaker culture knows Adidas is like the royals. So imagine getting invited to Buckingham Palace.”

And imagine following that with another so-crazy-it-just-might-work scheme: commissioning a pair of Nike Vandals in pure Swiss chocolate (currently safe and unchomped at the boutique Colette, that Parisian palace of upscale downtown cool). With those stunts under his belt and the petition project gaining steam, Cabino’s carefully crafted incognito status may not last too much longer. “I’m working on a book,” he says of his plans for ’06. “I’ve had a couple of offers to do a documentary, a Michael Moore kinda film, but the book is my priority.” With any luck, Cabino will be rocking the Nike factory’s first pair of McFlys as he writes it.