Shoes hanging from wires, the silent witnesses to urban street life; koans for an age of mass consumption.
The question I get most when I tell people I like taking pictures of shoes on wires is "why do you think people do it."
There are a number of popular explanations:
- the shoes mark drug dealer territory
- they are left where a person has died as a tribute
- bullies do it to weaker kids' shoes
And there are many more. Snopes.com has a roundup of popular explanations, almost all of them surely true at one point in place and time, but there seeems to be no universal answer.
My most common response is that people do it because they've seen it elsewhere, and want to make their own mark. It must be quietly satisfying to walk or drive by a pair on a regular route and see your handiwork, out of place but accepted as part of the scene.
