Tags
On Saturday afternoon while out on my tapas tour with Rachel (now aka @JaenTapas) we spotted the shoes on the right dangling up there and I stopped to take a photo of this curious sight. I put the pic up on Twitter when I got home and probably would have forgotten all about it, except that two days later (yesterday) I spotted another pair of shoes up in the air which seemed, well, weird. So I also put that on Twitter and got a few responses including one from Baron Grim who left a Wikipedia link about shoe flinging which also mentioned “shoefiti”. Seriously – shoefiti?
Have you ever seen this before?
casa azahar 
I see this a lot, and it generally makes me feel bad because I assume someone stole another person’s shoes and rendered them inaccessible.
Some people only have one pair of shoes, so it’s depressing.
I think I need a new POV about this. Bring on the sweetness and light, please.
LikeLike
I saw it in the US but never in Spain!
LikeLike
I think I’ve seen that before, long ago, possibly in Belgium. There were lots of them! I thought it was a traditional manifestation or something, possibly related to Till Eulenspiegel. I didn’t find any indication on teh interwebz that this may be the case though (nor would I know how it would be relevant for Spain).
LikeLike
In Scotland it works the other way around. You hang them up and they magically vanish the next morning.
LikeLike
Fairly frequently. It probably stems from some much, much older shoe-related tradition. Shoes were buried under doorways and stuffed up chimneys to ward off bad spirits and/or to bring good luck. Even long after the “magic” aspect of the tradition was no longer remembered, it was just something you did.
In Ottawa, there is a tree that kids nail a shoe to when they graduate from highschool. The city regularly takes them down but the next year there is a new crop. But this, too is a done extensively elsewhere, as well. Sometimes they are hung and sometimes nailed.
Shoes placed on a table are supposed to be bad luck.
You tie shoes to the back of the vehicle a bride and groom leave in to wish them good luck in their journey. This is an offshoot of the English tradition of throwing a shoe at someone leaving on a journey.
Much more here: http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/shoe/RESEARCH/CONCEALED/shoestuff.htm
LikeLike
More here: http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/shoes/…/teachers_shoes_further_information.pdf
LikeLike
Oh… and new shoes or resoled shoes worn by Finance Ministers on budget day…
LikeLike
I have always wondered what the motive for this activity was. There has been a pair of sneakers hanging from the telephone lines along my favorite running route for yonks — right outside the house of our most-annoying local elected official. Given the state of politics around here, the gang turf explanation would fit.
LikeLike
OMG, you mean there is a name for this??? COOL! Because I see this all over the place in these parts and always wondered about it! Thanks for the Wiki link with the great info!
LikeLike
I see it quite often, generally in streets that I (being a snob) would count as being in slightly lower class areas.
LikeLike