Shoefiti Strikes Pittsburgh
Is shoefiti drug related? Some Pittsburgh residents seem to believe so based on this column in today’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:
‘Wired’ sneakers spawn many theories - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Look up. You might spy shoes swaying above cars and pedestrians near McKnight Playground in Manchester, on Starr Avenue in Bellevue, by Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Polish Hill — and several other streets. Wondering what they mean and why they’re there has spawned many explanations, here and in cities throughout the country.
A typical one is that they represent the bases of drug dealers, said the Rev. Byron Kelly, 33, of Schenley Heights.
“I saw it on TV,” said Kelly, pastor of Olivet Baptist Church in the Hill District. “I can’t remember if it was Philly or New York. They said the better the pair of shoes, the bigger the drug dealer.”
Pittsburgh police say that might have been true during the 1980s — though they couldn’t confirm the theory even then — but no evidence exists today to support that idea.
Whether the shoes hanging from wires are drug related or not, if residents of a city believe that’s the case, that’s probably a good reason to work to get them off the wires.
This site got some ink in the article as well:
Ed Kohler of Minneapolis coined the word “shoefiti” in 2005 to describe the phenomenon. He founded a Web site, www.shoefiti.com, to display photographs and posts about shoes on wires.
Kohler said shoefiti is like graffiti: Both might be artistic statements or represent criminal activity, and often appear in “troubled neighborhoods.”
Worldwide “sightings” of shoefiti on Kohler’s site include Ecuador and France.
Published by admin on January 7th, 2008 tagged Shoefiti in the Press
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