A Hooker’s Take on What Shoefiti Means
A hooker told me what shoefiti means yesterday. But first, here’s how I ended up in that conversation: I headed out to paint over some new graffiti that popped up on the railroad bridge wall along W River Road. One of my spotters told me the bridge had been hit over night, so I decided to get it covered right away so it wouldn’t last even 24 hours.
Once the bridge wall was covered, I decided to use up the rest of the gallon of "oops" paint, so I headed down Lake St. One of my stops was the Dur Dur Bakery at E Lake & Cedar. While rolling the wall, a woman (white, ~40yo, long dirty blonde hair, wearing a baseball jersey and jeans ) commented that it was a nice day for painting. She was standing on the corner at the bus stop for the 21. However, she didn’t take the bus when it arrived. She kept hanging out until a maroon sedan took a right onto Cedar Ave S and pulled over around 20 yards from the intersection. The woman then wandered past me, chiming, "have a nice day" before hopping into the car with the grey headed driver who took a left on 31st St.
Does that make her a hooker? Probably not. Here’s what happened next:
A while later, I was heading East on Lake St to clean up a few tags near South High School. As I slowed down to take a right onto 21st Ave S, guess who I spotted at a bus stop only four blocks from Cedar Ave? The combination of slowing down to turn, and looking at her a little to long, I must have sent a signal that I was now up for some action because she immediately started heading down 21st Ave S expecting me to pull over.
Does that make her a hooker? Well, it’s certainly odd behavior if she isn’t one.
After cleaning things up a bit around the school, I drove out to Lake St on 19th Ave S and covered one more tag at that corner before heading home. Guess who came walking down the street? One thing changed: she was now carrying a bag of liquor. She approached me to ask what I was painting, and I explained any graffiti or tags I saw. I then asked her if she knew why there were so many shoes hanging from power lines around there. She didn’t know what I was talking about at first, so I said, "you know the shoes that hang from the power lines in the alleys around here. Is that some kind of drug thing?" She said, "I don’t know what it means. I just think it’s ghetto."
That’s coming from the mouth of one of our local service workers.
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