They perch over street corners, laced together and slung on utility wires, basking in sunlight and sipping from passing rains-stories ever in flux from town to town. These floating athletic shoes are many things to the people on the ground below. For some, they are simply an echo of impulsive, immature silliness – an inside joke, a daring dare between pals or the mark of adolescent pranksters.

Yet for others, those shoe formations carry significance.

They can be a farewell to a defining chapter: the end of school, the resolution of a personal pilgrimage, or the transition into a new phase of life. Then there are those worn out sneakers that bear much more. Placed by the loving touch of grief, some strung-out shoes become small stone monuments to those lost but never forgotten – symbols of profound loss and enduring love. But what do those footwear contraptions atop city intersections really signify?

Many people erroneously generalize them to imply crime and disorder.

Normally, the symbolism behind a dangling pair of kicks is just plain sweet. They symbolize saying a, sometimes playful, at sometimes sorrowful goodbye. They’re a celebration of accomplishment, often and always a remembrance of a cherished moment someone wants to revisit through this timeless adornment of urban streetscapes-a shoe with its own meaning; yours, for keeping a thought in place.