I’m surprised at you ! There is nothing aprocraphyl or mystic about shoes over a powerline !
It happened to me when I was going through high-school (and abandoned early for a GED because of school brutality).
Years ago I was beaten up by two boys and they took my shoes off running away with them and then hurled them into the air to catch on an electric wire. A nice woman stepped out of her house and yelled at the boys so they ran away.
I retrieved my shoes and thanked her.
It’s just a common thing to be mean. Like swirlies, and if you don’t know what THOSE are then you must’ve gone to a private schooling.
Also Cecil, I left a TON of questions for you in Email.
Are we supposed to ask there or do we ask them here ?
Shoes on a line was featured in the recent film Big Fish, which is loaded with apochryphal tales and some just made-up stuff. I had forgotten that it was based on a real thing.
Pick the best one or two and ask them in General Questions. If you get an answer, repeat. If not, email it off to Cecil.
dw817’s comment is in response to the column Why do you see pairs of shoes hanging by the laces from power lines? (02-Aug-1996). I just scanned through that column, and cripes! that’s got to be in the running for the worst column Cecil’s ever done. The answer is basically a mixed list of plausible reasons and idiotic assertions, with no critical thinking or commentary. This from America’s foremost weekly columnist? Jeez.
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, dw817, glad to have you with us.
When you start a thread, it’s helpful to other readers if you provide a link to the column that you’re commenting on. zut has kindly done that for you. It helps keep everyone on the same page, saves tons of time searching, etc. No biggie, you’ll know for next time.
And yes, you can email Cecil with questions. Don’t expect to hear back, though. If it’s a question that you really want an answer to, quickly, you might be better off posting it on the Message Boards. Cecil well over a hundred emails each week (excluding spam), and there’s not enough staff or resources to respond to all of them. Generally, if you get a response, it’s to tell you that your question is easily answered elsewhere (any dictionary, for instance)… or to tell you that Cecil has already covered it, and how to use the Archives on this website. If you don’t get a response, it either means (a) your question is so stupid that it’s not worth wasting the time replying, or (b) your question has been put in the pile that Cecil will consider.
The pile that Cecil considers is usually around twelve to fifteen a week, and he only uses one, or perhaps two. Staff may answer another one or two in a Staff Report. However, the process can take quite a while – sometimes only weeks, sometimes years. So, be patient. Actually, not hearing back from us is probably good news.
This is true, I have had the pleasure of visiting the areas where this takes place and it is very true. But in other places where hustlers and dealers arent a dime a dozen it just means that kids were bored.
I want to see some evidence of this. Drug dealers pitch shoes into power line to advertise their presence, despite the fact that law enforcement officers will immediately recognize the significance? That seems implausible to me. The whole concept smells like an urban legend, undoubtedly reinforced every time a suburbanite drives through an unsavory section of the city, sees a bunch of guys hanging out, and notices a pair of shoes dangling from the line. Horrors! A crack house! Good thing we’re savvy enough to recognize the subtle signs!
Do the sheriffs mind if you shoot the tennis shoes down with bird shot then? Oh, that makes it a meth lab also. Cop manual: “if they look down, lying / look left or right, lying / look down, on drugs / look straight at you, sociopath.”
I got into an argument with my father-in-law just last week over this. I pointed out the simple fact that if someone were dealing drugs, the LAST thing they want is a stranger knocking on the door saying “…uhh…i noticed the shoes on the wire. Got any crack?” But no, he said, he saw it on 60 minutes, so it MUST be true.
Hi Thrasymachus <- (now there’s a good bit of spelling!)
Yep, but it’s usually done by 3 boys holding one down.
You gather the victim doesn’t want it to occur, it’s in the ladies room, and generally the toilet was occupied.
I DID NOT LIKE HIGH SCHOOL AT ALL !!
It’s interesting to note that I did take Karate after I got my GED, got as far as Green Belt before I wound up in the medic ward. Karate is a tough sport !
As for what I am doing today, you can see that here:
While I can’t find it right now, I found a newspaper article from the 1960’s(I think)in one of my databases, which was an interview with an older city worker who had to try to remove these. He allowed as how it was something he did also as a kid in the 1930’s. So, it ain’t new.
This is a good point… After rethinking, I beleive that it probably was once true in the hay day and has slowly turned into a urban legend- for the most part. I’m sure adolescents have been throwing their old shoes up on the local wire just for kicks, trying to trick their old school neighborhood crack addicts.
The problem with the meth lab story is manyfold. One, meth labs stink and explode. The stench part tends to force them into deserted areas. As mentioned, no drug dealer would ever leave an overt sign in front of the house. The cops may always sit in a lawfully seized location (the street) and watch. Meth is sold through secret channels like anything else, mostly to truckers who need to stay awake for days at a time.
Oh, and fighter pilots – from the doctors. The world never fails to throw a few curve balls. Bus driver on meth: menace to society. Fighter pilot: must stay awake.
Before reading Cece’s article I’d only ever heard they were tossed up there as a memorial for their owner if he was shot or stabbed or whatever near the spot.
Ain’t like he was gonna need them where he was going.
I’ll bet the shoes are unrelated to the crack houses. The shoes are tossed onto wires by people likely to commit that sort of impish, rebellious, non-conformist sort of (vandalism? littering? graffiti?). Other behaviors engaged in by impish, rebellious and non-conformist kids may include using or dealing drugs. We see the two together and we say: aha!
And they only throw them on the wire at the full moon when all the babies are born, on a day when it’s the Superbowl and everybody flushes his toilet at halftime.
