They may be an eyesore to some, but a new video shows all of those dangling shoes on wirelines having some fun in Philly. South Philly resident Andy Rothwell has put together a short video called Dancing Shoes, featuring footage of all the shoes he could find in Philly hanging out on telephone wires. "I moved to South Philadelphia three years ago, and I'd never seen so many shoes on power lines," Rothwell told Curbed Philly. "Wherever I found one of those spots with eight or 12 pairs together, I'd take out my phone and take a picture."
The result is a 2:41-minute video of three year's worth of footage set to some toe-tapping music. "The final piece of figuring out how I'd make this fun was when I started leaving the camera running on any pair of shoes for a minute and speeding up the footage so the shoes would shake like crazy," says Rothwell.
The significance of these shoes has been highly debated; some assume it's a signal of gang territories or sites for drug deals. But Harry Kyriakodis writes in Hidden City Philadelphia that the custom of throwing sneakers onto the line hit its peak in the 1970s and was simply what you did when you outgrew a pair.
· Here's the video of puppets skateboarding through the city [Curbed Philly]
· Over the wire [Hidden City Philadelphia]