Shoes on Lampposts Mark Deaths in New York City?
Page 107 of The Rough Guide to New York City explains how rough things were in the early 1980’s, including a reference to shoes on lampposts:
Like Tompkins Square Park, this was not long ago a notoriously unsafe corner of town, run by drug pushers and gangsters, with cars lining up for fixes in the street, shoes hanging from lampposts to mark the spot where a body had been shot and the burned-out buildings were well-known safe houses for the brisk heroin trade.
Is that a memorial shoe hanging, or a marking not to mess with the dealers? Not sure.
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