Sole survivor
About an eon ago, I confessed to a fascination with the possible stories that led people to abandon a shoe at the side of the road, and requested photos of said forsaken footwear.
Here then, at last, is a selection of some the best, and ever so many thanks to all who contributed.
Judging from the volume I received, I’m guessing that sneaker tossing is a sport in some parts of the world.
The rest, I leave up to your unbridled imagination.
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Comment
- “I’m guessing that sneaker tossing is a sport in some parts of the world.”
It’s a thing rotten kids do to other kids’ sneakers or to their own stinky old sneakers, I think. Or, of course, it’s a secret conspiracy or a sign of drug dealers in the area or…
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_274.html
— Eeksy-Peeksy Sep 16, 11:56am # - Well thanks, McPeek, there go the last shreds of my innocence.
More salient details, then: a couple of Marshall’s photos were,
“taken at the ruins of the British Methodist Episcopal Church on Shaw Street in Toronto. Notably, this was the oldest Black congregation in Canada, and served as the terminus of the Underground Railroad for escaping US slaves.
It was destroyed by arson fire in 1998. The congregation has never found the funds to rebuild, and now the property has been sold and condos are planned.”
The culprit was apparently a parishioner/university student gone mad from the torment of a love triangle.
(In my younger days, I used to stand outside a Baptist church on St. Clair every Sunday morning, made giddy by the song and never daring to enter. Feeling white and hoping for a little redemption.)
— gail Sep 16, 12:49pm # - There are some sneakers dangling from electrical lines a mere two miles from here. They’ve been there for two years. I check, waiting for clues.
— peggy Sep 16, 1:52pm # - ok, those are the shoes, but what happened to the socks?
— katatonik Sep 16, 6:50pm # - Hi,
Similar to the first comment and its link…
While living and studying in Brooklyn over 20 years ago I once asked a true local about the many dangling shoes and I still remember his answer:
“That is a public sign that the owner of the shoes was put in a position where he had no other choice but to allow that to happen.”
— Robert Sep 17, 10:37am # - Searching Google for “abandoned shoe” yields a surprising 319 references!
Check out FilterPost : Vancouver abandoned shoes: Visit here to report abandoned shoe sitings in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada or anywhere!
www.filterpost.com/Navigate.asp?BID=1262
— APS Sep 17, 3:16pm # - Very Cool.
— Beerzie Boy Sep 18, 12:24pm # - Fittingly, my one picture of shoes-on-a-wire was taken in Vancouver.
— Marshall Sep 18, 9:06pm # - I was just debating with my son yesterday as to why there was an abandened shoe in the car park…......
— Anji Sep 19, 6:09am # - Under ‘embarassing reasons for shoes by the side of the road’ (and just in case someone saw it and wondered “why?”:
During a mid-night trek from Aachen, Germany, to the outlying village of __, feeling the need to orally relieve myself of an excess of drink, climbed out of the white jeep — driven by my huge sikh friend from Kashmir (met while in Egypt), and accompanied by the travelling cat, Habibi — thereby losing one of my shoes. One-half of the only pair accompanying me on my travels.
Spent the next day (barefoot) re-tracing our route along the autobahn, trying to recognise those bushes and the concrete guardrail which I’d ‘examined’ quite closely the night before. To the protests of cat, sikh, and German boyfriend who complained that I could just buy more shoes. They just didn’t get it.
Success, eventually. The recovered sodden footwear never really did match the other one. But at least it didn’t end up being one of those pathetic unclaimed victims.
Thank you for this opportunity, finally, to explain.
— Diane Sep 19, 2:01pm # - Alas, the first comment had some shred of truth to it. Twas’ once a custom to identify areas where illicit drugs could be purchased by the tossing of shoes over the powerlines. The higher quality shoes, the better the drugs.
I don’t know if this custom is still in practice by the underbelly of our human existence.
— Nik Sep 22, 4:47pm # - I am certain that in Kentucky it is not only a sport, it is a rule. It is hard to walk down any street near WKU campus and not find a pair shoes on a wire.
Thanks for being part of my “100 Blogs, 100 Comments.”
— J2 Sep 25, 4:16pm #
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