I transferred to a new University this fall as an upperclassman and the neighborhood surrounding it isn't exactly nice. It is sort of rough. I have to park in the neighborhood during the day and walk 4 to 5 blocks to school *usually* and the first week I was there I noticed a pair of white sneakers with a blue stripe thrown over an electrical wire at an intersection, like an exclamation point. A few weeks later, there is another pair of sneakers, white with a RED stripe. My imagination has been running absolutely wild about this.A friend mentioned that this might be gang related. In memorial of someone who died or as a declaration of territory. Thoughts or facts?
You know, I've seen this sort of thing where I live since I was a kid, and I'm now in my forties. Not once did I think it was drug or gang related. I thought it just bored kids doing something silly with an old pair of shoes. At worst I thought they were thrown up there by bullies who had torn them off some poor kid's feet, just for a laugh. Is it drug or gang related? I suppose it's possible. But my neighborhood never struck me as being drug and gang infested when I was growing up, so I don't know.
“Shoes on a Wire” is a well-known street semiotic that drugs are nearby and available for purchase. In New York City, there is a special sort of whistling dealers use to communicate with each other and with their buyers. Sometimes the whistling is a warning the police are nearby and other times it is used to push people away from claimed turf. In special instances the whistling calls in backup. I haven’t figured out the exact meaning and replication of the sounds yet but it is a fascinating phenomenon for further investigation.
Shoes on a line are typically used to mark a gang's territorial boundaries. This intersection is likely the newest turf up for grabs. There are better, less obvious ways to identify important buildings, chiefly by word of mouth among members in most gangs.
What you are seeing might be gang related or whatever but the one in my area that has the shoes on it (an I mean lots of shoes lol).I was told that some of the kids that are getting ready to graduate high school throw their shoes at the line,they only get one throw at the line.
There really are a lot of different possible meanings for shoes over a telephone wire. It could mark gang territory or drug availability (even though these are pretty ineffective since police aren't idiots). It could be a memorial to someone who died, but that's a pretty lousy memorial. Or, as it was when I used to do it, it could just be kids having some fun with their old shoes. If you really aren't feeling well about this, you might stop by the police department and ask them if they know anything about it.
