Shoefitti

Shoe flinging or "shoefiti" is the American and Canadian practice of throwing shoes whose shoelaces have been tied together so that they hang from overhead wires such as power lines or telephone cables. Shoe tossing has also been observed in areas of the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Mexico, Ecuador and Ireland.

In some neighborhoods, shoes tied together and hanging from power lines or tree branches signify that someone has died. The shoes belong to the dead person. The reason they are hanging, legend has it, is that when the dead person's spirit returns, it will walk that high above the ground, that much closer to heaven.

However, sometimes shoefiti is marker for gang territory or a place where drugs are sold.




I took this photo while I was out feature hunting. I saw a pair of cleats hanging from power lines an remembered that I have always thought that it would have made a nice photo. When I came back to the office, I learned that a soccer player from a local high school had been killed in a car accident on I-25. I don't know if these cleats were related to the accident or not.