Boot throwing

Shoe tossing, the act of using shoes as projectiles or improvised 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.

Shoe dangling, or shoe flinging, 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. Once the shoes are tied together, the pair is then thrown at the wires as a sort of bolas. The practice, despite its widespread use throughout the United States has been one of curiosity over the years as a number of possible explanations for the act have cropped up without any general consensus on its origins. Shoe flinging has also been reported in many other countries.

Shoe flinging occurs throughout the United States and Canada, 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. There are many cultural variations as well, with differences between socio-economic areas and even age groups.

A number of criminal explanations have been proposed as to why this is done. The foremost is bullying in which a bully steals a pair of shoes and puts them in a place where they are unlikely to be retrieved. Or sometimes it is done as a practical joke played on drunkards. 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.

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