Dangling shoe blight creates headaches in Long Beach

Shoes hanging from utility lines: Nobody wants to touch them in Long Beach.

Shoes hanging from utility lines: Nobody wants to touch them in Long Beach.

At least four overhead line companies, including Southern California Edison, are responsible for removing the eyesores, but the crews are loathe to touch wires belonging to other companies, the Los Angeles Times reported.

So city officials are calling for a way to cut through the red tape and get the shoestrings clipped within 72 hours of a report.

"It's nothing but a blight," Councilman Dee Andrews, who came up with the idea, told the newspaper. "If you see one tennis shoe hanging off a wire and you don't do anything about it, you're going to see another, and another, and you're opening up the floodgates."

Shoes slung over utility wires have an urban folklore all their own. And while there's little agreement about what they mean, city officials generally agree they are a bad sign.

In Andrews' district in central Long Beach, the city has fielded hundreds of requests for shoe removal in the past two years. About half of those shoes are still dangling, John Edmond, Andrews' chief of staff, told The
Times.

In 2007, the Los Angeles City Council took up the issue and called for removing shoes within 72 hours of a report.

Southern California Edison crews remove shoes in three to five business days, "but they're rarely on our electricity lines,'' spokesman Larry Labrado told The Times.