Shoes on the Wire: Four Weeks in L.A. Trying to Figure Out What the Hell Is Going On
Six neighborhoods, endless rumors, and one weird slice of L.A. that nobody can fully explain.
I’ve spent the last four weeks walking Los Angeles — 212,000 steps, give or take — chasing stories that didn’t want to be found. South Central. Boyle Heights. Echo Park. Venice. Pacoima. MacArthur Park. The parts of L.A. you don’t see on Netflix real estate porn.
I pulled favors. I called people who owed me. I listened.
I talked to drug dealers leaning on busted Cutlasses, OG gangsters who’ve seen more funerals than birthdays, retired LAPD detectives who’ve seen every version of stupid, DWP linemen who’ve pulled more shoes off wires than anyone with a pension should have to, kids drinking warm beer behind corner stores — and, of course, because this is still L.A., the art school kids who can turn a pair of sneakers into a TED Talk.
And after all that? The answer is: it’s complicated.
But like everything else in this city, it's not one story — it’s six, stacked and tangled like the wires overhead.
The Dealers: “We don’t advertise.”
First stop: South L.A., off Florence and Normandie. I found a couple guys leaning against a Cutlass who were willing to talk — not on record, but straight.
“That’s some Hollywood shit, man,” one said, lighting a joint. “Ain’t nobody out here hustling, throwing shoes to mark turf. You wanna advertise like that? That’s how you get fucking locked up.”
In the real L.A. game, business is quiet. Tight. Word-of-mouth. You know, or you don’t. The shoes aren’t part of it.
In hindsight, my new friends — while perfectly polite — clearly thought I was an idiot for even asking. And yeah — I see their point.
The Gang Members: “Shoes? Nah. We got better ways.”
Slide a little east to Boyle Heights, behind a liquor store on the corner. I met up with a guy who used to bang heavy back in the day. Full disclosure: I met him a while back while shooting a sizzle reel on graffiti. He’s still pissed Netflix passed.
“Graffiti, bro. Tags. That’s how you know who runs the block,” he said. “The walls talk. The hands talk. Signs, symbols, ink — you don’t need shoes.”
Hand signs, graffiti crews, colors. That’s the language of the street.
“Those shoes? Usually just kids fucking around. Or fools trying to act hard.” He shook his head. “That shit’s for the clowns who don’t know fucking shit.”
The Cops: “We always checked. Mostly, it was nothing.”
I called an old LAPD homicide guy who worked Rampart when Rampart was still the Wild West. His answer? Predictable.
“Look, anytime we saw shoes on a wire, we checked. But nine times outta ten? Some bored kids, some graduation ritual, some drunken dare.”
He paused. “Don’t get me wrong — sometimes it marked something heavy. But not usually. Mostly, it’s beer, bad decisions, and teenage testosterone.”
The Utility Worker: “I’ve pulled thousands down.”
I found a DWP lineman up in Pacoima who’s been yanking shoes off wires for twenty years. He’s seen it all.
“You name it, I’ve pulled it down: shoes, bras, stuffed animals, bikes, even a car bumper once. People get drunk. People get stupid.”
His theory? Once one pair goes up, the wires become a magnet. A challenge. The street version of a wishing well. Everyone adds their offering.
The Memorials: “Sometimes it means somebody didn’t make it home.”
But not all of it is harmless. In some parts of L.A. — South Gate, Compton, parts of East L.A. — the shoes sometimes carry weight.
A young man near MacArthur Park said it softly, like it still hurt to say out loud: “My homie got shot last year. We threw his kicks up there. It’s for him. To let people know he was here.”
No plaque. No funeral procession. Just a pair of sneakers, dangling silently in the breeze.
A low-budget monument to lives cut short. And in a weird way — stripped of all the bullshit — it was kind of beautiful. Raw. Honest. The city finding its own broken poetry.
The Hipster Problem: “It’s performance art, bro.”
And then — because this is still Los Angeles — there’s them. The hipsters. The art school kids. The trust-fund philosophers of Venice, Silver Lake, and Echo Park who couldn’t survive 10 minutes east of the 5.
“We’re making a statement,” one art student told us while sipping some turmeric nonsense outside a coffee shop. “It’s about transience. About consumerism. The impermanence of identity in urban landscapes.”
Sure, man.
Sometimes it's art collectives staging “installations.” Other times it’s bored influencers creating "urban decay" aesthetics for their feed.
The city becomes their curated backdrop. The sneakers their pseudo-political statement. Street art without the street. Danger cosplay.
Meanwhile, the old heads just roll their eyes.
“They don’t know the story,” one dealer told us. “They’re tourists.”
The Folklore: “It means the opposite, depending who you ask.”
Then there’s James Barcenas — a guy who knows shoe culture better than most. He’s been collecting since he was a kid and is now sitting on a stash worth just north of half a million. The guy knows shoes. When we spoke, he added yet another layer to the mess.
“Some believe it started as a kind of street code,” James told me. “In some communities, especially Latino neighborhoods, shoes on the wire were a sign that this was a safe place for kids to play. Sort of a quiet signal: this block watches out for its own.”
But like everything else with these shoes, there’s a flip side.
“Others say it was the opposite — that it was once used to warn that immigration was nearby. A kind of neighborhood broadcast that ICE or La Migra was in the area, sweeping for undocumented residents. A silent, visual warning to lay low.”
Two completely different messages. Same pair of shoes. That’s Los Angeles.
The Truth: It Means Whatever You Want It To Mean
In the end, there’s no single answer. That’s the dirty little secret.
Sometimes it’s kids.
Sometimes it’s grief.
Sometimes it’s art school bullshit.
Sometimes it’s street memorials.
Sometimes it’s neighborhood folklore.
Sometimes it’s just Friday night.
Sometimes it’s real.
Most of the time, it’s not.
The shoes swing there above L.A. like the city itself: chaotic, misunderstood, tragic, hilarious, a little dangerous, and absolutely full of stories.
They don’t make sense.
And maybe that’s exactly the point.