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Citizen complaint of the day: Skyboots
By adamg on Tue, 11/05/2013 - 8:28am
Whatever happened to sneakers? A concerned citizen makes the mistake of looking up on Tremont Street on Mission Hill:
Boots on wire between light poles.
Neighborhoods:
Free tagging:
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Comments
What is the origin of this
What is the origin of this phenomenon
You are joking, right?
Typically, though not always, it is teenagers goofing off, but also it is a sign to show that drugs are sold at this point or nearby. It is business signage without an ISD permit review.
Also see the film "wag the dog" ...
.. in which image-makers created a fictitious war hero named Shoemaker and orchestrated the supposedly-grass-roots practice of throwing shoes over a wire as tribute to him.
I gotta say, I had no idea
I gotta say, I had no idea about the drug connection. I thought it was just teenagers goofing off (though, I always questioned the wisdom of throwing one's shoes on a wire like that. Then you have no sneakers!)
Some explanations
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1177/why-do-you-see-pairs-of-sh...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe_tossing
http://www.snopes.com/crime/gangs/sneakers.asp
Thats 100%
A Yuppie complaint!
It's not a complaint
It's not a complaint, it's simply reporting a condition that needs to be fixed sooner or later so that the wire doesn't get damaged. The city can dispatch the report to Verizon or Nstar who will put it on their queue for next time a bucket truck is in that neighborhood; people submitting tickets like this will, on the whole, make the system more efficient.
Sadly, we don't know the submitter's state of mind
It could be a complaint. In the past, people have complained about sneakers being a marker for drug dealers or gang territories. Maybe the person who filed the report is worried local gangbangers are really trying to up their game. Or, like you said, could just be a notice for NStar.
True story
When I was a teenager, some friends and I stole our ski coach's sneakers during practice and threw them over what we thought were telephone wires to the ski lodge. Welp, we found out mighty quick that they were actually power lines when the sneakers began sparking and catching fire when they bridged the gap between two wires. When the laces burned through, they fell to the ground in a mass of flaming rubber...I can almost still smell it.
How terrible
I bet you never wanted to do that again
I was always under the
I was always under the impression that shoes hanging from a wire was a beacon for drug dealers to do business.
Hanging nurse uniforms
There was a time there were dorms on Charles Street for nursing students, and when they graduated hey would hang their uniforms on lines that stretched from a window on one side of Charles Street to a window on the other side. I'm not sure how they engineered this. I remember seeing it in the 70s.
That is typically
That is typically a sign it's free to do nursing and phlebotomy in that community.
Hey, watch it!
Hey, there could be kids here; no ph-bombs.
The whole
drug dealer thing is BS. Just goes to show hoe naive you yuppies really are.
yuppies?
Sounds more like a townie legend to me.
Padlocks on Mass Ave fence ov er pike by Heinz T stop
Anybody know what that's about?
Could it be an attempt...
... to adopt this French romantic "tradition"?
http://www.bonjourparis.com/story/paris-love-locks-love-that-wont-die/