Shoe tossing is the throwing of a pair of laced shoes across raised cables, such as telephone wires and power lines, or onto tree branches to create "shoe trees”.
Why do people do it? There’s no easy answer.
Across North America, shoes are thrown onto wires in both rural and urban areas, and their perceived meaning varies from region to region. Often, the shoes are sneakers.
Many cultural variations exist and differences abound between socioeconomic areas and age groups. In some cultures, shoes are flung as part of a rite of passage, e.g. to commemorate the end of a school year or a forthcoming marriage.
Some theories suggest the custom originated with members of the military, who are said to have thrown military boots, often painted orange or some other conspicuous colour, at overhead wires as a part of a rite of passage after completing basic training or when leaving the service.
In the 1997 film Wag the Dog, shoe tossing is an allegedly spontaneous tribute to Sgt William Schumann, played by Woody Harrelson, who has purportedly been shot down behind enemy lines in Albania.
Shoe tossing may be a form of bullying, where a bully steals a pair of shoes and tosses them where they are unlikely to be retrieved.
Shoe tossing has also been explained as a practical joke played on drunks who wake up to find their shoes missing.
Shoes on a telephone wire are often said to be linked to organised crime, signifying the location of gang turf, commemorating the death of a gang member or a non-gang member who lived in the area. The shoes are also rumoured to mark a spot for drug deals or to indicate a nearby crack-house.
A 2003 newsletter from former Los Angeles, California, mayor James Hahn cited fears of many LA residents that "these shoes indicate sites at which drugs are sold or worse yet, gang turf”, and that city and utility employees had launched a program to remove the shoes.
However, it is difficult to determine whether shoes were placed by gang members for gang-related purposes, and police officers in several jurisdictions believe it to be a myth. Retired police Sgt Rob Demarco, who spent 20 years on the force in Eastchester, New York, has a theory that most shoes are flung simply because there were already other shoes up there. Maybe.
More conclusively, a 2015 study of shoe-tossing data in Chicago failed to establish a causal connection between drug dealing and shoe tossing. [Ed: Some people get to work on fun projects, right?]
It’s probably reasonable to conclude that each instance of shoe tossing would have its own unique context and meaning, often influenced by local customs and, let’s face it, individual intentions.
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References
wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe_tossing
rd.com/article/shoes-on-power-lines
Images
1. Shoe tossing
2. A large number of shoes on a wire in Greenpoint, Brooklyn in 2021
3. A shoe tree in San Diego, California
4. Shoe tossing tribute to Sgt William ("the Shoe") Schumann, Wag the Dog, 1997
5. Woody Harrelson in
Wag the Dog, 1997
6. Shoe tossing hoodie. Credit: @juice__jcg.
7. Shoe tossing tattoo. Credit: @tattoosnob.
8. Shoe tossing light bulb. Illustration credit: Adrià Ramírez.
