Silly Friday poll: Shoe lore

[prog]

[Poll #1446981]

Comments

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

I remember hearing something about it. I think it might have been drugs, not sure.

[ex-colorwhe.livejournal.com]

hey, is this poll about *points to icon*??

[prog.livejournal.com]

I don't even know who that guy is, so no. :)

[ex-colorwhe.livejournal.com]

he is nate from girlyman (http://www.girlyman.com/), and girlyman has a new album out, which has a fabulous song on it called easy bake ovens, (http://www.girlyman.com/themusic/lyrics.php?song_id=84) which happens to have a refrain about "throwing your shoes right up over the wire." i'd never heard the phrase before that song, and now your poll comes along, so. :)

[prog.livejournal.com]

That is some fantastic synchronicity!

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

I believe what it means is "heh heh your shoes are stuck up there now". Either that or "bring home Sergeant William Schumann".

[prog.livejournal.com]

I have no doubt today that that's what it actually means, but for some reason that's never how I heard it. (I regret not thinking to put it up as a poll option now, tho)

[radtea.livejournal.com]

I'd've voted for that option--it's what I took for granted when I was a kid, the kind of town I grew up in.

I've heard recently--the past two years, maybe--the drug-meet story, but not previously.

[prog.livejournal.com]

I hadn't run into the drugs story as a kid, but classicaljunkie heard it from a neighbor a couple of years ago. So maybe that's more of an adult-based urban legend than a kid one...

[gemini6ice.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was just the result of bullying, I always was told and believe.

[kahuna-burger.livejournal.com]

I totally though Wag The Dog when I saw the question, too.

[pseudomanitou.livejournal.com]

Kevin got his ass beat down by Gramm, again.

[jadelennox]

I was just told that it was a general gang thU.ng.

[keimel.livejournal.com]

When we went to Philmont in New Mexico (1983??), some people would toss their expired and dead boots over the gateway to hang there for others to see. I kept my boots.

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

There was an outbreak of shoes-thrown-over-phone-wires in my neighborhood when I was about ten, a new pair showed up every couple of days for maybe three weeks.

IIRC, the official Big Kids Who Knew Everything [tm] swore that they knew Some Kid who knew Some Other Kid who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors but right before that they heard Yet Another Kid say that he knew some kid who got killed by a drunk driver and someone threw shoes over the wire with the dead kid's name written on them. Or something like that. Stuff that makes total sense when you're ten.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Urban legend near me was that gangs did it to mark their territory. And if someone crossed them they'd kill 'em and throw their shoes over the wires.

[leighjen.livejournal.com]

I heard the gang marking the territory urban legend, too. I think the first time I heard it was when I lived in Nashville in the 90's.

[rserocki.livejournal.com]

If you wanted to know what other sources had to say about it, you would have, and perhaps did, look it up yourself (rather than simply being curious what other people in your friends list had read or heard) but just for fun:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1177/why-do-you-see-pairs-of-shoes-hanging-by-the-laces-from-power-lines

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/set/shoetrees.html
("*They* were looking for it, too, but *they* weren't good enough!")

[radtea.livejournal.com]

My god I love the "logic" in the first link! "I saw a news brief about a neighbourhood in Amsterdam where there was a lot of drug use, and there was a pair of shoes over a wire, so that proves it!" and "This seems proven to me, there were a pair of shoes over the wire near where a drug murder had occurred."

There's probably more but I had to avert my eyes!

[chocorisu.livejournal.com]

There is an N64 controller hanging from the wires in my neighbourhood. Dunno what that means. Game got cancelled in the area or something?

[gemini6ice.livejournal.com]

hahaha

or maybe some newb got pwned neaerby

[grr-plus1.livejournal.com]

I'd always assumed it meant a bully had stolen somebody's shoes and flung them where they could not easily be retrieved.

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

I always thought it was something kid did to other kids ... knock em down -- grab their shoes -- tie em together and sling them over power lines. Kid then gets to trudge home in his socks and have to explain to parents where his shoes went.

There was some movie where they were using the 'shoes over the power lines' thing to promote some political idea ... saw it once on cable but don't remember and don't care.