Why do shoes hang from telephone wires?

In my old neighborhood bullies would beat you up, take your shoes and throw them on the wires so you couldn’t get to them. It was like a deer’s head for their trophy room.

@gemiwing ; I always thought it was for drugs.

I’m pretty sure its because of gravity.

@troubleinharlem Could be, depending on the neighborhood.

i have always wondered. thought someone went up there, got electrocuted, vaporized and only their shoes stayed… guess that doesnt make much sense anymore! ;)

i believe its about gang territories…or so i am told…personally where i come from people used to nick your shoes and throw em up there because its one of the few places you have no hope of getting them back and are reminded of it every-time you walk past….in big fish (fictional film by tim burton) its about town boundaries and the freedom of wholesome bare feet type thing

Perhaps the stress of having us on their backs all the time was too much. We really should be more aware of the alarming suicide rate of sneakers.

In the alley here behind the house here, it meant the neighbor kid was just being a kid.

angels not tying them properly

Cause this is where shoes come from. Shoes are the fruit of the telephone poles(though it’s actually a herb). They fall when they are ripe. But due to popular demand of different colors, shoes are often picked before maturity. Green ones are picked at the very earliest.
Stay away from the brown ones!

However, in those days, it was spelled “Shoo”. Very European.

Shoe picking is quite popular. People often mistake shoe pickers for homeless. The reason they are roaming the streets in all seasons, is because the shoe is an all-year crop.

The height during the 1930’s, when it became the occupation of the day – as droves of bankers and stock market investors went out to pick shoes – caused havoc on the market as there were too many pickers on the streets. The economy took years to salvage – as it wasn’t easy to make people stop picking shoes. It was a real hullabaloo, and the shoe pickers all thought that everyone else was really cheeky, and when the people was forced to work as bankers and brokers once again, they they became very sad; commonly known as the Great Depression.

In accordance with this – to mark a new start of a new era – they put an e to shoe instead. Though mostly cause it looked nifty.

As it in the old days was common to purchase them straight from the pickers, a commonly heard request in the street was “Shoes, please” or just the most common “Shoo!”; and you received your foot garment. With the depression though, the relationship between consumers and pickers went cold, which created the need for big retail stores instead. Nowadays when you say “Shoo” in an encounter with a shoe picker, they often turn and run, as they think you will make them work with finances.

This is also the reason that when something goes pear-shaped, one say’s “Oh shoo…”.

The more you know!

@oratio you look like disgraced tv presenter Jamie theakston :) well done

And what’s with the one shoe on the side of the road thing? Where’s the other one? Who the hell loses one shoe on a fricking highway – did they chuck one out the window?

@Zen_Again lol i often see discarded socks or even underwear…..who and what situation would make a person put their other clothes back on and yet discard the essentials? knickers arnt cheap after all…a sock here and there maybe….but a bra?...

I saw this a bit back, doesn’t answer it but gives some possibilities

@noodle_poodle—The underwear I understand, actually. The socks too.
But why one fucking shoe?—

All I know is that it’s an old South Philly neighborhood tradition which makes as little sense as another tradition
down there peculiar to New
Years.

At midnight people come out and shoot off guns straight up in the air. This moronic behavior had resulted in people (frequently kids) being killed or permanently disabled by a falling bullet.

Just because they’re small, doesn’t mean that they don’t achieve significant velocity in their descent.

But obviously the dimwits who perpetuate this idiotic tradition aren’t that big on knowledge of the laws of Physics.

@Buttonstc how does that involve shoes ?

They are BOTH long standing traditions which make no sense other than a display of machismo.

I always was under the impression that the shoe thing started in S. Philly a long time ago.

But perhaps it also spontaneously happened elsewhere rather than a copy of S. Philly. I’m not certain.

GA, @Oratio. Instant mythology. Impromptu myth is one of my very most favorite genres.

In my hometown, if there are shoes hanging from the wires, it means someone got beaten up and their shoes tossed up there.
When I moved, two of our local neighborhoods threw shoes up there to signal what drugs they have different colors are different drugs, but if there are black shoes up there, everything has been shut down.

When my friend died, we threw his shoes on the wires so we would always be able to see him when we drove by. We begged the city workers to leave them up there, and they have been there for about three years now.

I’ve also seen shoes taken off drunk people or crowd surfers at concerts and thrown up there when they piss people off.

I’ve also seen them as a work of art.

My ex-husband was in the Army and he said all of the combat boots were tossed up there by people who were getting out and going home.

Hanging is the prescribed penalty for being soleless.

It means drugs are for sale nearby.

haha where i live, if i move i always throw shoes on the lines, it just markin ya territory, thats all

@troubleinharlem lol
You’ve always thought it was because of drugs, eh?

I’d heard it signaled drug deals – don’t know if that’s an urban myth or not?

@janbb In some places, it is used for drugs. In my town, green shoes are weed, white are cocaine, blue are heroin, red is meth, black means cops showed up and took everything.

In some places, its because someone has died. But there are many, many “reasons” out there, each are just as true and untrue. I rather think that each person who throws shoes up there has their own reason and meaning.

Here is the wiki article on all the various ideas about why this happens, as well as what it means in different cultures.

it wards off vampires

because they want to ha!