Why shoes hanging from wires

In some parts of New York City, the most pervasive theory seems to be related to drugs. Apparently, the shoes indicate sites where they are sold. Aside from my one friend, everyone within the group — all of whom are long time New Yorkers - knew this, which struck me as strange. According to this theory, bullies steal the shoes off their victims and toss them on the wires, where they cannot be retrieved.

The shoes can also be used to identify gang turf, signify that a person has passed away or to commemorate an event, like the end of a school year or a wedding. Alternatively, they could have no meaning at all. Maybe people have just begun to fling shoes out of boredom.

Although why would you want to sacrifice a perfectly good pair of sneakers? The wide range of explanations makes it difficult to really know the whole story.

A pair of shoes hanging from a wire in Thornbury, Melbourne, Australia. Urban Legends About Shoe Tossing We may not know why people throw shoes over power lines, but that does mean we probably know why they don't.

One of the most prevalent urban legends about shoe tossing is that it marks gang territory or a location where drugs are sold, but despite anecdotal evidence provided by current and former gang members, there's no proof that this has ever been a widespread practice.

It would also be an objectively ineffective system. Over the years, explanations for shoes hung from power lines have ranged from memorializing the dead to celebrating a move or job promotion to bullied children whose shoes have been stolen and thrown out of their reach. There's no doubt that someone, somewhere has thrown shoes over power lines for each of these reasons, but with so many different possible interpretations, no one can ever be sure about any of them, and "sure" is what you want to be when you're looking to buy drugs or do some ganging.

Shoes hanging from overhead wires in city Oryol, Russia. If we know, largely, why people don't throw shoes over power lines, then why do they? They toss a pair of shoes over a power line and leave their mark on the city. The shoes are a way to say that you were there and that you accomplished something — like with the celebration of newly lost virginity in Australia. Shoefiti is often said to have the same effect on a neighborhood as graffiti, so communities hoping to keep a particular image have cracked down on shoefiti and prosecuted those who throw their shoes over power lines, according to the documentary.

While graffiti artists chafe against the idea of shoefiti having the same artistic representation as their paint, the concept of shoefiti still holds. People want to leave their mark. Instead of a way to mark territory, some artists use shoes and power lines as a way to create art. Some performance artists made artistic, two-dimensional appearing shoes and hung them around the various cities in the world, such as New York City, London, places in South Africa, and more.

The artists enjoy the aesthetic of the hanging shows, the transgression of hanging them, and the actual act of throwing shoes up and watching them bounce around on the telephone wire, caught in their new home. Perhaps some people throw their shoes onto power lines because they saw someone else do it. Replication of something for its own sake is the hallmark of a meme.

But memes existed before the digital era. When someone sees shoes on a power line, they might want to throw their old pair of shoes just for the fun of it, to replicate the meme. There might be no gangs in the region, no need to celebrate the loss of virginity, no place to buy drugs nearby. Another interviewee describes how he did a similar thing in New York City. Where else could you mount your sneakers as public yet personal memorabilia? The documentary describes another person who hung up his sneakers as a way to mark transitions in his life.

He threw up a bunch of sneakers in , about six or seven pairs, at a time when he was hustling in a gang. He looks back on them in and is struck by how different a person he is. Professor Marcel Danesi says that tossing shoes satiate a long-standing human need — to be remembered, to show that we existed. Changing the physical space we occupy does that, whether it is some paint on a wall or leaving shoes on the telephone wire.

As with the restaurant workers leaving behind their shoes, as with the New York City men looking up and remembering their old shoes, the shoes only could have gotten up there if the owners tossed them up. In that way, the owner of the shoes made a lasting mark on their environment. The shoes are evidence that they existed, which is enough for anyone to pick up an old pair of shoes and leave their mark.

Be sure you have a good aim when throwing shoes. Shoes with thick rubber soles, in particular, could do damage to sensitive areas, such as the face or neck. The Shoe Watch would climb on their cars and, with sticks, retrieve the shoes hanging on the telephone lines.