One of the greatest mysteries of modern times does not involve the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, the existence of the Loch Ness monster, or the celebrity of Paris Hilton; it is why do we see so many pairs of sneakers hanging over telephone and power lines? I admit that you will not find the answer here, as there seems to be none from the research that I have done. But there is no denying that sneakers hanging over power lines is a much more perplexing phenomenon than, say, crop circles for instance, which are easily explained as coming from alien spaceships touching down on farms across the world. Sneakers hanging on power lines have many potential explanations, but none of them make much sense when you examine them.
The answer you will get most often, even from police and law enforcement, is that a pair of sneakers draped over power lines is a sure sign of gang or drug activity in that location. A couple of high school kids recently showed in their science fair project in a Pennsylvania city that this is not likely, as they matched known drug and gang activity with where sneakers hanging on power lines were found, showing that there was no correlation. But the urban legend of gangs and drug dealers marking their territory with a pair of sneakers dangling from these lines is so entrenched, that drug dealers and gang bangers themselves may possibly think they need to do this to follow proper etiquette. But if I was going to start selling drugs, would I want to alert every cop in the neighborhood that this was my intent by hoisting a pair of my old Nikes up in the wires? Why not hang out a shingle outside my house with my prices and hours of illicit operation on it as well?
The idea has arisen that gangs create some sort of memorial to fallen members with this custom, but this premise falls short in many ways. I live in rural Connecticut, and I doubt that the pair of sneakers I have seen hanging from Butts Bridge over the Qunebaug River for as long as I can remember are there because it is where a gang member met his maker, unless he fell in while fishing. It also does not explain the several pairs of sneakers hanging in wires all around the town I live in now, sleepy Moosup, located in the Quiet Corner of the state. Besides, if all the sneakers in power lines across the country were there to mark the untimely end of a gang member, wouldn’t you know if a dozen or so were offed in your town, or do you think it wouldn’t make the papers?
Some people speculate that sneakers hanging in power lines are there because the local bullies pull them off of the class nerds and then send them flying into the wires where the poor kid can’t get them back. I somehow doubt however that there are a band of roaming bullies beating the snot out of classmates and then tying the shoes they have taken together and tossing them into the sky until they wind up entwined on the power lines. I would have heard of that growing up. Actually, this would have more than likely happened to me, and since I never lost a pair of my P F Flyers in this manner, I can’t subscribe to the idea.
Another proposal of how these sneakers make their way to their ultimate fate is that teenage boys, having lost their virginity, celebrate and mark the occasion with a sneaker toss. But I have a hard time seeing how this would have become the popular way to commemorate such a milestone in one’s life. Who was the first to make it all the way with a girl and then think, “I’ll show the world what I have done by tying my old sneakers together and then spend fifteen minutes throwing them up in the air until they finally tangle in these wires”? The fact that nobody seems to know how and why these sneakers end up in such a predicament suggests that it is done late at night, but why would somebody sneak around in the dark to do something that nobody really realizes the significance of to begin with?
It has been suggested that soldiers leaving the military, or seniors graduating from school, are the culprits responsible for sneakers in power lines. The last day of school is also given as a time when happy kids wind up and see who can get their sneakers to hang from the wires. I don’t buy this either, because at some point parents would get wise to a child coming home barefoot and ask questions. This would then in turn give your mother or father one more thing to warn you not to do, as in “Make sure you come home wearing your sneakers, and don’t let me catch you throwing them up in the power lines like that Johnson kid down the street does every summer”.
There are so many pairs of sneakers up in the lines today that it may be impossible to know why they are there. The urban legends of the gang and drug activity may actually cause those who partake in this to think this is what they are supposed to do. Likewise with the other explanations. Some kids getting out of school for the summer may be taking sneakers and doing this with them because they think it is what they should be doing, and so forth. This means that it is entirely possible that someone a long time ago bought a pair of sneakers from the store and on the way home, while they were still tied up, somehow threw them up in the air and lost them overhead in the wires, starting a trend that still exists today.
