Shoe tossing

Shoe tossing , the act of using shoes as improvised projectiles or weapons, is a constituent of a number of folk sports and practices. Today, it is commonly the act of throwing a pair of shoes onto telephone wires, powerlines, or other raised wires. A related practice is shoe tossing onto trees or fences.

Shoes hung from overhead wires ("shoefiti")

Shoes hanging from a telephone wire in Gothenburg, Sweden

Shoe flinging or "shoefiti" is the practice of throwing shoes whose shoelaces have been tied together so that they hang from overhead wires such as power lines or telephone cables. The shoes are tied together by their laces, and the pair is then thrown at the wires as a sort of bolas. This practice plays a widespread, though mysterious, role in adolescent folklore in the United States. Shoe flinging has also been reported in many other countries.
Shoe flinging occurs throughout the United States, in rural as well as in urban areas. Usually, the shoes flung at the wires are sneakers; elsewhere, especially in rural areas, many different varieties of shoes, including leather shoes and boots, also are thrown.^{[citation needed]}
A number of sinister explanations have been proposed as to why this is done. Some say that shoes hanging from the wires advertise a local crack house where crack cocaine is used and sold^[1] (in which case the shoes are sometimes referred to as "Crack Tennies").^{[citation needed]} It can also relate to a place where Heroin is sold to symbolize the fact that once you take Heroin you can never 'leave': a reference to the addictive nature of the drug. Others claim that the shoes so thrown commemorate a gang-related murder, or the death of a gang member, or as a way of marking gang turf.^[2] A newsletter from the mayor of Los Angeles, California cites fears of many Los Angeles residents that "these shoes indicate sites at which drugs are sold or worse yet, gang turf," and that city and utility employees had launched a program to remove the shoes.^[3] However, the practice also occurs along relatively remote stretches of rural highways that are unlikely scenes for gang murders, and have no structures at all to be crack houses.

A Boy Scout throws his boots over the Philmont entrance sign at Base Camp, a longstanding tradition.

Other less sinister explanations have been ventured for the practice. Some^[who?] claim that shoes are flung to commemorate the end of a school year, or a forthcoming marriage as part of a rite of passage. In Scotland, it has been said that when a young man has lost his virginity he tosses his shoes over telephone wires to announce this to his peers.^[4] It has been suggested that the custom may have originated with members of the military, who are said to have thrown military boots, often painted orange or some other conspicuous color, at overhead wires as a part of a rite of passage upon completing basic training or on leaving the service.^[5] In the 1997 film Wag the Dog, shoe tossing features as an allegedly spontaneous mass cultural manifestation of tribute to Sgt. William Schumann, played by Woody Harrelson, who has purportedly been “shot down behind enemy lines” in Albania, although the development has been orchestrated by the public relations team of the U.S. President in its effort to divert attention from an incipient scandal concerning his sexual impropriety.^[2]
Others claim that the shoes are stolen from other people and tossed over the wires as a sort of bullying tactic, or as a practical joke played on drunkards.^[5] Others simply say that shoe flinging is a way to get rid of shoes that are no longer wanted, are uncomfortable, or do not fit.^[4] It may also be another manifestation of the human instinct to leave their mark on, and decorate, their surroundings.^[5] It has been reported that workmen often throw shoes if they are not paid for waxing floors.^{[citation needed]}
In some neighborhoods, shoes tied together and hanging from power lines or tree branches signify that someone has died. The shoes belong to the dead person. The reason they are hanging, legend has it, is that when the dead person's spirit returns, it will walk that high above the ground, that much closer to heaven.^[4] Another superstition holds that the tossing of shoes over the power lines outside of a house is a way to keep the property safe from ghosts. Yet another legend involves that shoes hanging from telephone wires signals someone leaving the neighborhood onto bigger and better things.^{[citation needed]} Of course, only each individual shoe-thrower knows why his/her pair of shoes now hangs from a wire.

Shoe tree

The Shoe Tree in Morley Field, San Diego.^[6]

A shoe tree, not to be confused with the shoe-preservation device of the same name, is a tree (or, occasionally, a powerline pole or other wooden object) that has been festooned with old shoes.^[7] Shoe trees are generally located alongside a major local thoroughfare, and may have a theme (such as high-heeled shoes). There are currently at least seventy-six such shoe trees in the United States,^[8] and an undetermined number elsewhere.

Competitive boot throwing

Boot throwing has been a competitive sport in New Zealand for many years, although not one that is taken very seriously. Gumboots or Wellington boots are the heavy rubber boots worn by most farm workers and many other outdoor workers. A competition to see who can throw a gumboot the furthest is a feature of many Agricultural Field Days in the rural communities. The town of Taihape in the central North Island is particularly identified with this sport; they claim to be the Gum Boot Throwing Capital of New Zealand. They hold an annual competition in the main street and award a Golden Gumboot as the trophy; see Wellie wanging.
Since 2003 the sport has been practiced competitively in Eastern Europe. The 2004 World Championship Competition was won by Germany who is hosting the 2005 Competition at Döbeln. Teams were also expected from Sweden, Estonia and Russia. Boot throwing has been a popular sport in Finland since 1976 when the first Finnish Championships of boot throwing has been organized.

In popular culture

In Wag the Dog, a 1997 film, a political spin doctor played by Robert De Niro used shoe-tossing as a propaganda weapon to commemorate a fictitious veteran of a war they made up by manipulating news media.
In Big Fish, a 2003 fantasy drama film, Jenny Hill, a young girl in the town of Spectre, throws the shoes of protagonist Edward Bloom (Ewan McGregor) over telephone wires to discourage him from leaving the town.
In episode six of the fifth year of the television series Viva La Bam, the protagonists abandon a shoe in which they were sailing down the Delaware River and tie it to a tree "like they do in the ghetto".
In "Like Mike", an antagonistic character tosses the main protagonists shoes (Michael Jordan's shoes, a pair of Nikes from MJ's childhood) over a wire, just for them to be retrieved during a thunder storm again.
In the anime series, Azumanga Daioh, character Osaka throws her shoe to forecast the weather, only to end up in a garbage truck! Recently on the Comedy Central Show Tosh.0 there was an episode of shoe tossing and was referred to as hood rat mystery
In the 2008 film Sex Drive, one of the lead characters, Felicia, played by Amanda Crew, throws her shoes into a shoe tree next to a highway. The inspiration for the scene came when writer John Morris saw a shoe tree in Reno, Nevada and put it in the script. For the film, a tree was covered in 480 pairs of shoes, which were then subsequently removed.^[9]

Abandoned footwear

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Abandoned footwear, such as a lone boot or shoe, has often been noted in out-of-the-way places like ponds or by the side of roads. ^[1][2] Sometimes the shoes may even be new and fashionable.^[3]
There are many hypotheses about why this phenomenon seems to more often involve footwear than other types of clothing.^[4][5] Shoes, being more sturdily constructed than most other types of clothing, will last longer after being abandoned outdoors. Leather shoes, for instance, are estimated to last for 25-40 years outside.^[6] Some shoe abandonment is intentional, as in shoe tossing, in which shoes are tied together by their laces and thrown in great numbers into trees, over power lines, or over fences.
An unusual abundance of abandoned shoes was found on Miami's Palmetto Expressway on Friday, 2nd January, 2009. Thousands of assorted shoes of all kinds and conditions were scattered across the highway, disrupting traffic for many hours. The shoes were collected for the charity Soles4Soles which redistributes shoes to needy people. This unusually large batch of shoes was expected to go to Haiti.^[7][8]

Artistic use

Some artists such as poets derive insight and inspiration from abandoned footwear - a form of art known as objet trouvé.^[9] The fisherman hauling up an old boot, rather than a fish, is a comic-strip cliché. In Cinderella, the lost slipper is a classic example of the literary device of the 'lost object'.^[10]
The theme of abandoned footwear and their untold story is explored in detail in the novel, Jen-Zen and the One Shoe Diaries by author Julie Ann Shapiro.^[11] In the novel, her character describes the phenomenon, “The forgotten shoes are everywhere: littering the side of the highway, floating in the tide, going upstream with the Salmon, or occupying a field like a dead body,discarded and left to rot.” The novelist described the backstory of her novel, which offers much insight about the abandoned footwear from an art, societal and philosophical perspective.

“

In Southern California I noticed flip flops and running shoes left behind on the beach, the freeways, construction sites and parking lots and felt this uncanny urge propelling me to write about them. I couldn’t escape them, nor the unshakable sadness and loss I felt emanating from the shoes themselves. Why singular shoes I kept asking myself? Is it a Cinderella complex? Is this a poem I should write or a short story? I wrote them all and then one pivotal day I remembered a time as a teenager when my friends and I played with a Ouija board and a shoe moved by itself. It was this big aha moment!

”

The author noted that, "... real life photographer, Randall Louis Hamilton contacted me and mentioned having a shoe photo collection, proving that life sometimes is stranger than fiction." The two artists have since collaborated on their coincidental works.^[11]
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs,and customs that are the traditions of that culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called folkloristics. The word 'folklore' was first used by the English antiquarian William Thoms in a letter published by the London Journal in 1846. ^[1] In usage, there is a continuum between folklore and mythology. Stith Thompson made a major attempt to index the motifs of both folklore and mythology, providing an outline into which new motifs can be placed, and scholars can keep track of all older motifs.
Folklore can be divided into four areas of study: artifact (such as voodoo dolls), describable and transmissible entity (oral tradition), culture, and behavior (rituals). These areas do not stand alone, however, as often a particular item or element may fit into more than one of these areas.^[2]

Artifacts

The three wise monkeys over the Tōshō-gū shrine in Nikkō, Japan

Objects such as dolls, decorative items used in religious rituals, hand-built houses and barns,^[3] and handmade clothing and other crafts are considered^{[by whom?]} to be folk artifacts, grouped within the field as "material culture". Additionally, figures that depict characters from folklore, such as statues of the three wise monkeys may be considered to be folklore artifacts, depending on how they are used within a culture.^[4] The operative definition would depend on whether the artifacts are used and appreciated within the same community in which they are made, and whether they follow a community aesthetic.

Oral tradition

Folklore can contain religious or mythic elements, it equally concerns itself with the sometimes mundane traditions of everyday life. Folklore frequently ties the practical and the esoteric into one narrative package. It has often been conflated with mythology, and vice versa, because it has been assumed that any figurative story that does not pertain to the dominant beliefs of the time is not of the same status as those dominant beliefs.^{[citation needed]} Thus, Roman religion is called "myth" by Christians. In that way, both "myth" and "folklore" have become catch-all terms for all figurative narratives which do not correspond with the dominant belief structure.
Sometimes "folklore" is religious in nature, like the tales of the Welsh Mabinogion or those found in Icelandic skaldic poetry. Many of the tales in the Golden Legend of Jacob de Voragine also embody folklore elements in a Christian context, as well as the tales of Old Mr. Brennan. Examples of such Christian mythology are the themes woven round Saint George or Saint Christopher. In this case, the term "folklore" is being used in a pejorative sense. That is, while the tales of Odin the Wanderer have a religious value to the Norse who composed the stories, because it does not fit into a Christian configuration it is not considered "religious" by Christians who may instead refer to it as "folklore."
"Folktales" is a general term for different varieties of traditional narrative. The telling of stories appears to be a cultural universal, common to basic and complex societies alike. Even the forms folktales take are certainly similar from culture to culture, and comparative studies of themes and narrative ways have been successful in showing these relationships. Also it is considered to be an oral tale to be told for everybody.^{[clarification needed]}

Hansel and Gretel is a fairy tale of Germanic origin, recorded by the Brothers Grimm in 1812. The tale has been adapted to various media, most notably the opera Hänsel und Gretel (1893) by Engelbert Humperdinck and a stop-motion animated feature film based on the opera. Artwork by Arthur Rackham, 1909

On the other hand, folklore can be used to accurately describe a figurative narrative, which has no sacred or religious content. In the Jungian view, which is but one method of analysis, it may instead pertain to unconscious psychological patterns, instincts or archetypes of the mind. This may or may not have components of the fantastic (such as magic, ethereal beings or the personification of inanimate objects). These folktales may or may not emerge from a religious tradition, but nevertheless speak to deep psychological issues. The familiar folktale, "Hansel and Gretel", is an example of this fine line. The manifest purpose of the tale may primarily be one of mundane instruction regarding forest safety or secondarily a cautionary tale about the dangers of famine to large families, but its latent meaning may evoke a strong emotional response due to the widely understood themes and motifs such as “The Terrible Mother”, “Death,” and “Atonement with the Father.”
There can be both a moral and psychological scope to the work, as well as entertainment value, depending upon the nature of the teller, the style of the telling, the ages of the audience members, and the overall context of the performance. Folklorists generally resist universal interpretations of narratives and, wherever possible, analyze oral versions of tellings in specific contexts, rather than print sources, which often show the work or bias of the writer or editor.
Contemporary narratives common in the Western world include the urban legend. There are many forms of folklore that are so common, however, that most people do not realize they are folklore, such as riddles, children's rhymes and ghost stories, rumors (including conspiracy theories), gossip, ethnic stereotypes, and holiday customs and life-cycle rituals. UFO abduction narratives can be seen, in some sense, to refigure the tales of pre-Christian Europe, or even such tales in the Bible as the Ascent of Elijah to heaven. Adrienne Mayor, in introducing a bibliography on the topic, noted that most modern folklorists are largely unaware of classical parallels and precedents, in materials that are only partly represented by the familiar designation Aesopica: "Ancient Greek and Roman literature contains rich troves of folklore and popular beliefs, many of which have counterparts in modern contemporary legends" (Such as Mayor, 2000).
Vladimir Propp's classic study Morphology of the Folktale (1928) became the basis of research into the structure of folklore texts. Propp discovered a uniform structure in Russian fairy tales. His book has been translated into English, Italian, Polish and other languages. The English translation was issued in USA in 1958, some 30 years after the publication of the original. It was met by approving reviews and significantly influenced later research on folklore and, more generally, structural semantics. Though his work was based on syntagmatic structure, it gave the scope to understand the structure of folktales, of which he discovered thirty one functions.^[5]

Cultural

Folklorist William Bascom states that folklore has many cultural aspects, such as allowing for escape from societal consequences. In addition, folklore can also serve to validate a culture (romantic nationalism), as well as transmit a culture's morals and values. Folklore can also be the root of many cultural types of music. Country, blues, and bluegrass all originate from American folklore. Examples of artists which have used folkloric themes in their music would be: Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, Old Crow Medicine Show, Jim Croce, and many others. Folklore can also be used to assert social pressures, or relieve them, for example in the case of humor and carnival.
In addition, folklorists study medical, supernatural, religious, and political belief systems as an essential, often unspoken, part of expressive culture.

Rituals

Many rituals can sometimes be considered folklore, whether formalized in a cultural or religious system (e.g. weddings, baptisms, harvest festivals) or practiced within a family or secular context. For example, in certain parts of the United States (as well as other countries) one places a knife, or a pair of scissors, under the mattress to "cut the birth pains" after giving birth. Additionally, children's counting-out games can be defined as behavioral folklore.^[6]