Shoes hung on a wire
I’ve noticed a lot of these around Vancouver: shoes on a wire. They’re everywhere.
Are they merely the product of bored teenage angst? Ingeniously-disguised secret police listening devices? A way for local gangs to mark their territory? Durable nests for enterprising pigeons?
The Shadow knows.
This phenomenon is fully explained in the movie Wag the Dog.
There was a pair of these hanging from a wire in Gastown’s Maple Tree Square for a while, outside of the greasy spoon (now the restaurant Moonshine).
Not very interesting – until I realized that they weren’t real shoes; they were made out of cardboard, two-dimensional, painted to look like sneakers, with real shoe-laces.
Trippy.
http://www.snopes.com/crime/gangs/sneakers.htm