Really hi-tops
London, ON, July 2009
I will never understand the university/college-town tradition of tossing a pair of shoes over the top of a power line. I realize it's probably tied to some sort of fraternity or sorority ritual, but it still strikes me as wasteful and disrespectful. After all, if it's OK to hang a pair of shoes from here, why not that old coat I'd been meaning to toss? Or whatever other garbage I found lying around the house and wanted to see dangling above the neighborhood for the next six months?
Re-reading that last paragraph, I realize I'm rapidly becoming an old curmudgeon. G-d help me. There, I'm good.
So in celebration of feet week - please see here if this makes no sense to you - I wanted to share this apparent misunderstanding of Nike's "Just Do It" slogan. The "It" in this case should not involve ruining an apparently perfectly good pair of shoes. Oops, there goes that curmudgeonly voice again. I'll go back to muttering, alone, on my porch.
Your turn: Who owned these shoes? How did they come to be here?
I always heard that when someone got beat up, the winner got to throw his shoes up on the power line. Maybe I dreamed that. Either way, it sounds ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteThey did that to Luna Lovegood's shoes in Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix..!
ReplyDeleteI should repost my "invisible shoe woman" picture here...I'll do that shortly; if ever there were a place to post that photo, it's here!
I thought the shoes were *retired* after a championship game. Like a symbol of a job well done, shoes well loved, ball well played.
ReplyDeleteThat thought makes me smile when I see them. Then again, I'm a sucker for "Like Mike" ;) I love the thought of them falling down before the perfect next owner!
it used to signify gang territory here in the UK.
ReplyDeleteI posted a similar shot on one of my blogs and was told that this meant a drug territory. I had no idea.
ReplyDeleteI heard the same story that Cuidado did, that this was advertising for the local drug dealer. Which really makes very little sense since drug dealers would usually neither want nor need to advertise. But then again, what about the street drug trade makes a whole lot of sense anyway?
ReplyDeleteI got some more feet for ya, of a less wasteful (and less dangerous) kind in this post
A perfectly good pair of Chuck Taylors. Now why? I mean, why?
ReplyDeleteGood capture. :-)
I laugh when I see ONE shoe on the road. Did someone just decide they no longer needed the left shoe?