HANGING AROUND

Throughout the neighborhoods surrounding IU's campus community, pairs of tennis shoes dangle alone or in groups from telephone and electrical wires in collections of one pair to a dozen.\nSimilar to any urban legend, campus community members offered speculative suggestions to the primary cause of shoe-hanging. Popular myths of why an individual, or group of people, consciously choose to toss their tennis shoes over telephone or electrical wires include the availability of narcotics nearby, the loss of an individual's virginity, vicious pranks aimed at family or friends, a post-graduation festivity, a symbol of wedding or honeymoon love, the silliness felt from liquor in bloodstreams and the traditional teenager excuse of, "It seemed like a good idea at the time." \nFolklore Professor John McDowell said campus community members are creating a relatively new ritual that is part of the college student culture.\n"I think this ritual of placing shoes on telephone wires is a relatively new custom, maybe the last 10 years or so," he said. "It's always possible, since I am speculating; maybe people have been doing it for a hundred years. Like a snake shedding its skin, students shed their tennis shoes. I see it as a way of saying goodbye to a certain phase of their lives."\nMcDowell said humans often seek to personalize old customs by introducing new twists into the mix, instead of just following some old ritual handed down from parents and grandparents.\n"A pair of shoes on a telephone wire takes us to the bedrock of human nature," he said. "This ritual ties into almost any culture you could study. Basic needs are universal; we have to have some way of doing things. The same is true of marking territory. All cultures mark significant transitions in human life: birth, child no longer a baby, first haircut, birthdays, graduation, weddings (and) funerals." \nWith a patch of suspended tennis shoes visible from his front porch, graduate student Ryan Gonter said he doesn't know who threw the footwear onto the telephone wires, since the dozen or so pairs were hanging in their current place when he moved into the neighborhood in August. \n"I have no idea why people do it," Gonter said. "I've only heard rumors like the loss of someone's virginity. I saw a few of my neighbors trying to toss them up there, but the shoes hanging from the telephone wires (don't) bother me."\nJunior Eric Nygren, who resides underneath a wire decorated with six pairs of tennis shoes, said he does not believe the rumor of drug dealing reported to him by a friend. Instead he said he has witnessed several neighbors in the act of tossing their shoes.\n"It's pretty simple," Nygren said. "It's a stupid college thing people do. Somebody probably got drunk and thought it would be fun." \nMcDowell said campus community members probably toss their shoes onto telephone or electrical wires when they are finished with their degree.\n"You certainly see it a lot more at the end of each semester," McDowell said. "In that sense, they have outgrown their stay in Bloomington. That somehow seems appropriate to me, setting aside one pair of shoes and putting on another. Shoes are interesting equipment that takes us places." \nIn order to effectively navigate friends and family to his house, Sophomore Joe Hebda said he uses the multiple pairs of shoes dangling from a telephone wire in front of his house as a directional marker. \n"The shoes show where we live," Hebda said. "I just tell people, 'If you are coming from Atwater, it's the house with all the shoes above it on the right."\nNot all campus community members appreciate the aesthetic properties of dangling shoes. IU Police Department Lt. Jerry Minger said he doesn't recall the IUPD having to deal with any tennis shoe tossing incidents within the campus community. \n"I imagine (shoe tossing) is some kind of folklore," Minger said. "The thing that calls an officer out is any manner of illegal, unusual or suspicious activity. If someone took the time to call the police, we would respond to it, of course. (Shoe tossing) doesn't sound very smart on several different levels. I know, as a parent, if I had a child doing that, I wouldn't be very proud of them."\nJunior Zech Ashba, a Shoe Carnival employee, said he contemplated throwing his tennis shoes over telephone wires when he was younger because he thought it would be cool. He said he encourages campus community members to explore shoe tossing when retiring an old pair of sneakers.\n"Do it; go for it," Ashba said. "Make sure you get some cheap shoes; you should buy your shoes at the Shoe Carnival. The shoes would probably say, 'Please don't throw me over a telephone wire.'" \nSimilar to pouring out the first drink of a 40-ounce beer, senior Patrick McDaniel said he heard the rumor growing up that shoes hanging on telephone wires symbolized the death of a gang member after a gang war. Presently, he said he is mystified as to the motivation behind shoe tossing activities.\n"Whenever I see shoes on wires, I imagine some 13-year-old kid throwing his little brother's shoes up there," McDaniel said. "If I had an old pair of tennis shoes, I would give them to Goodwill or some other charity. There is no sense in wasting good shoes. What the hell are you doing?"\nMcDowell said tennis shoe tossing and hanging is similar to the territorial behaviors of most human cultures and animal communities. \n"If we feel we have a connection to a place, I think it is only natural to want to leave your mark on a place," McDowell said. "In order to symbolize the connection, we do different kinds of things to change the appearance of our environment. Animals leave their scent; humans have carved their names into trees and rocks for a long time. In this sense, shoes on a telephone wire are related to human beings in the universal sense." \n-- Contact staff writer David A. Nosko at dnosko@indiana.edu.