Why do shoes hang on power lines?

Has it ever happened to you? To be walking along the street, looking up and, suddenly, seeing a pair of old shoes or shoes hanging on an electric cable, like strange birds that someone had put there on purpose for some reason, that most escapes us.

Is it perhaps some new fashion? An urban trend that is slowly spreading through cities, towns and small neighborhoods? There are several theories that are sure to surprise you, so let's move on to discover this recurring mystery.

The mystery of hanging shoes in cities

Maybe remember a scene from the well-known Tim Burton movie « Big Fish «.Ewan Mcgregor, after traveling through a haunted forest, arrives at an exotic and fantastic town where everyone had hung their shoes on the wires and walked Barefoot.That lovely image could have certainly inspired this particular fashion that we have all seen in our streets, but it is not at all due to the original Tim Burton 2003 movie.

The phenomenon itself has a specific name, originated in the slums of the United States, "Shoefiti" .A term resulting from joining the words 'shoe' (shoe in English) with the end of 'graffiti'.We already have, then, a small part of the mystery solved, but the most essential is missing. The why.

Second what has been recorded so far about such fashion, almost always sneakers are usually hung on power lines.However, they can also be found in trees, balconies, street lamps...We have multiple testimonials in Internet.The reasons why it is done are very diverse, but they focus on basic axes and, almost entirely, in marginal contexts:

• The shoes are hung in a visible place and striking to indicate that a particular group or gang exercises power in that area.
• Another theory with quite a base: to indicate that in that particular area is sold drug .
• To point out that there are valuables in the adjoining house and it is "interesting" to start a r obo .
• Sneakers in a power line sometimes means that a police shooting has occurred.

Leaving on the one hand the aspects related to crime in which, according to sociologists, the phenomenon began, we now explain other trends that we can see today and that depart a little from the origin in the humblest neighborhoods in the US

• Shoes can be hung on a light cable, to celebrate something: weddings, end of university, win a sporting event...
• In the military barracks it is very common to see boots hanging from light cables and street lamps.It is a way to celebrate graduations.

  

Finally, we must also point out that practice a movement called «Shore Tossing» .U A aesthetic expression marked by the youth incorformism that started a young man named Ed Kohler in 2005.It is more associated with the graffiti movement and there is a page, even where anyone who wants it can upload their videos or photographs to extend this curious a little more urban art.

And you Have you ever seen shoes hanging on a light cable?

Image: Wayne Stadler