SHOES ON A WIRE The fine art and fascinating history of shoe tossing.
By Mandalee Meisner, Jayplay writer
One summer day three years ago, Paul Brook was attempting to throw a pair of shoes tied together at the laces onto a power line by his house.
Even though they see them every day, most residents of the student ghetto have no idea who puts sneakers on telephone wires, much less why. The pasttime has a
If you wanted a lesson in shoe tossing, Brook, master shoe tosser, would be a good place to start. Brook has thrown enough pairs of shoes — most mismatched and tied together with shoelaces — over electric wires to fill at least three cardboard boxes. Big ones. His work mainly takes place on the 300 block of 14th Street in Lawrence.
long history and Brook isn't the only one who finds pleasure in decorating our landscape with shoes of every shape and size. Other examples of shoe tossing can be found in Topeka, Kansas City, Chicago, Boston and Tijuana. In San Francisco, Brooks found a pair with a poem, which passersby could read, stuck to the bottom of the sole. But even though shoe
tossing is mostly a phenomenon associated with urban areas and dangerous lifestyles, it has found a home above Lawrence's streets.
Ernesto Cruz, an American studies graduate teaching assistant, knows of two "urban legends" associated with tossed shoes, both dealing with gritty inner-city realities. The first one is a mourning rite. A pair of shoes dangling from a wire or a tree means that somebody has recently died. In the second, a crack cocaine dealer tosses a shoe up so his clients know that he's in business.
So how did something heavily associated with the urban population end up in Lawrence? The origins seem steeped in mystery, but Brook thinks it may have begun with 14th Street. He and his friends have been shoe tossing for a while on their block. He's not sure if it started with a drunken band member at the "Pirate House," but he is sure that tossed shoes have become a common sight.
Brook calls shoe-tossing a "mockery of corporate advertisement." If someone
sees an advertisement for Pepto-Bismol enough times, they'll start to think heartburn is just something that comes with eating, not necessarily a product of eating insensibly. Similarly, Brook says that if people see shoes on wires enough, they'll integrate it into their idea of normality instead of questioning it. "I like it because it makes people wonder; it makes them ask questions," Brook says. "I think it's good for people to wonder."
just like graffiti artists "tag" buildings with spray paint. "I think it's artistic actually," Dean says. "If you take a toothbrush and put it on a desk, people will notice it. It's just something out of place."
Cruz would probably agree with Brook's assertion that people are copycats by nature. But in his world, shoe tossing isn't a form of corporate mockery. It's a classic example of misappropriation.
In sociological terms, appropriation happens when one group borrows a ritual, image or aspect of another group's cultural identity. Misappropriation is a corrupted form of appropriation — more like stealing than borrowing. It's when one culture assumes something that had meaning for another culture and ignores the meaning.
Cruz says that when someone performs a ritual without understanding the history behind it, he's glorifying ignorance.
Bartholomew Dean, assistant professor of anthropology, uses a more positive word to describe the common urban practice of throwing shoes onto power lines: self-expression. Dean has seen examples for at least 15 years and likens it to "tagging," an artistic outlet in an urban community. Shoe tossers "tag" electric wires with their sneakers
Creativity and eclecticism are common themes of shoe tossing. Most of the shoes are old thrift-store finds, which Brook thinks is fitting because after the utility companies come to apprehend the interfering shoes, they drop them off at a thrift store.
"If you take a toothbrush and put it on a desk, people will notice it. It's just something out of place."
Bartholomew Dean,
assistant professor
of anthropology
Brook and his friends have tossed the following things, in addition to the normal double sneaker tie: a papier-maché fish and toy truck tied together, cardboard boxes full of empty beer cans, a dildo, roller skates, treacherous ice skates and stillettos strung together with pieces of a soccer net.
Though his shoe-tossing experience runs the gamut, even Brook was taken aback by one international example of a wire dangler. In Mongolia, he came upon a brick — the kind with three holes in the middle — broken in half and thrown across a lone electric wire in the desolate wilderness. It looked out of place and made him wonder. But hey, that's the point, right?
— Mandalee Meisner can be reached at mmeisner@kansan.com.
4.15.04 Jayplay
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