A couple of years back when the Park Board dedicated a new totlot at
Clinton Field off 25th and Clinton Ave. So. there were probably 15-20
pairs of shoes across an electric wire. When I asked what that was all
about I was told it was a Latino sign for something and no one else seemed
to know what it was really.
My bigger question was who's tennis shoes are they? Or did they come off
someone else's feet? And then after you throw your tennis shoes up there,
do you have the next $60-$100 for a new pair?
It seems we on this list are not quite up on this possible hop-hop thing -
how about some of you parent's with teenagers on the list see if they can
give us some clues so we can get to the bottom of this thread.
Summer in the City,
Annie Young
East Phillips
At 09:25 PM 6/28/05 -0500, Ed Kohler wrote:
WizardMarks wrote: You're right, though, around here shoes on the wires are
a signal about where to look for drugs.
Ed Kohler: Those are the ones I'm after. As Mark Wilde pointed out, there is
little good information on why shoes end up on power lines. I don't know for
sure why they're there (only guessing), but there seems to be a correlation
between problematic blocks and shoes on power lines. Obviously, shoes end up
on power lines for any number of reasons, just like graffiti has more than
one motivation. For example, there is a difference between soccer spikes
hanging next to Minnehaha Academy (freshman hazing?) and shoes in an alley
alongside gang graffiti.
Perhaps the shoes are more of a signal to the dealer than to the buyer? If I
was to park and sit near a pair of shoes on a power line, and didn't look
like a cop, I image dealers would approach me. Why else would someone sit in
a car underneath a pair of shoes on a power line? I got the impression that
the "pavement princesses" (never heard that one before) were similarly
confused by my stopping in their pick up lot beneath the shoes I mentioned
last night.
Another example: My neighbors have been dealing with a problematic house on
46th Ave S for a while now. In the year I've owned my home, I've had shoes
removed from the middle of the intersection of Lake and 46th three times.
An alley in Nokomis East has shoes hanging at the North and South
intersection, and another pair mid-block in the alley.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=5754+Sander+Dr,+Minneapolis,+MN&spn=0.029183,0
.085316&hl=en
(I reported these tonight.)
A Longfellow Neighborhood block had a pair of shoes at the alley, and gang
tags on garage doors mid-block within the alley.
All pranks? Perhaps. But they're darn tenacious pranksters, and choose some
out of the way spots if their goal is notoriety (like some graffiti
'artists' are motivated by).
I got a laugh out of Dottie's "can't been 'em, join 'em" strategy. Should we
all start dressing like gangsters too? I don't know if I could pull it off.
I'd just like to be able to call them in when I see them, with the
expectation that the issue will be addressed in a reasonable amount of time
regardless of the neighborhood. It makes me feel like I've accomplished
something, and "the system" is working.
- Ed Kohler
Cooper
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