{"id":1066,"date":"2008-06-26T02:05:50","date_gmt":"2008-06-26T07:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingmontreal.ca\/2008\/06\/26\/shoes-in-the-sky\/"},"modified":"2013-01-21T11:12:14","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T16:12:14","slug":"shoes-in-the-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/06\/26\/shoes-in-the-sky\/","title":{"rendered":"Shoes in the Sky"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/network\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2008\/06\/shoes.jpg\" title=\"shoes on power line\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/network\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2008\/06\/shoes.jpg\" alt=\"shoes on power line\" style=\"float: left; padding-right: 6px\" width=\"300\" \/><\/a>When I began writing for Spacing Montreal I planned to write an expos\u00e9 on mysterious shoes hanging from power lines. Just a couple of days prior I&#8217;d woken up to find a pair of yellow sneakers dangling from lines right in front of my bedroom window, and it had got me thinking about this strange phenomenon.<\/p>\n<p>I asked a few friends what they thought these shoes signified, and heard a hilarious variety of theories of what they marked: drug dens, a speakeasy, gang territory, murder locations, crazy swinger sex parties&#8230; this was some seriously dark stuff, with no consensus to be found.<\/p>\n<p>Then I got Googling, and found that again, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.straightdope.com\/classics\/a5_274.html\" title=\"shoe tossing - straight dope\">no one<\/a> really had a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snopes.com\/crime\/gangs\/sneakers.asp\" title=\"shoe tossing - snopes.com\">firm answer<\/a> to this <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Shoe_tossing\" title=\"shoe tossing - wikipedia\">ages-old question<\/a>. My sources \u2014 Wikipedia, Snopes.com, and the Straight Dope \u2014 do present some novel and even weirder possible explanations though: deaths, graduations, marriages, and more.<\/p>\n<p>Since no one can agree on the meaning of looping shoes over power lines I can only surmise that there is, in fact, no real significance. Wouldn&#8217;t it be troublesome to have celebrated the loss of your virginity thusly only to be visited by crackheads day and night? Similarly, it would have to be difficult to convince gang members that your shoes are hanging out front simply because you passed out drunk in front of pranksters, not to encroach on their turf.<\/p>\n<p>So I just look at these strung-up shoes as a little touch of humour in unexpected places \u2014 another one of the oddities of the city that you can only experience by looking up once in a while. Seeing dangling shoes remind me that I need to do just that more often.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I began writing for Spacing Montreal I planned to write an expos\u00e9 on mysterious shoes hanging from power lines. Just a couple of days prior I&#8217;d woken up to find a pair of yellow sneakers dangling from lines right in front of my bedroom window, and it had got me thinking about this strange<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/06\/26\/shoes-in-the-sky\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;Shoes in the Sky&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5032,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7830,7831,29],"tags":[7,12,125],"class_list":["post-1066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-community","category-streetscape","tag-behaviour","tag-graffiti","tag-montreal"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Shoes in the Sky - Spacing Montreal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/06\/26\/shoes-in-the-sky\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Shoes in the Sky - Spacing Montreal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When I began writing for Spacing Montreal I planned to write an expos\u00e9 on mysterious shoes hanging from power lines. 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