I’ve always been fascinated with the image of sneakers thrown over a string of telephone wires. You always see it in neighborhoods where no one can afford to loose a pair of sneakers. This has always made it feel like a hateful act.

I always picture a little kid being robbed of his sneakers by a much larger bully of a kid. Then I picture the large bully tying the laces together while running down the street as the much smaller, barefooted kid, hobbles along after him. As the little kid hobbles closer and closer to the larger kid who has begun to slow down, the larger kid begins spinning one shoe with the other like a cowboy getting ready to lasso a steer.

The larger kid bully stops just bellow a string of power lines. Just as the smaller kid reaches the larger, he chucks the spinning shoe up and over the power lines where they spin until they’re completely wrapped around and completely stuck. The larger kid points and laughs before walking off down the street in search of his next victim. Meanwhile, the smaller kid looks up at his unattainable sneakers and wonders how he’s going to tell his father that he lost his only pair of shoes on his third day of school.


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