Shoes on a Florida Expressway

Posted by Alex in Car & Vehicle, Fashion on January 2, 2009 at 2:55 pm


Commuters driving to work early today on the Palmetto Expressway in Florida encountered something weird: thousands of shoes on the road:

According to Florida Highway Patrol spokesman Lt. Pat Santangelo, thousands of pairs of used shoes mysteriously appeared at 7:42 a.m. on the southbound lanes of the Palmetto Expressway between the Bird Road and Miller Drive exits.

Employees of the Florida Department of Transportation’s Road Rangers service, which is meant to provide roadside assistance, managed to push all the shoes into one lane using large brooms.

A private contractor was hired to use a front-end loader to pick up the shoes by the dozen and load them into a large dump truck, Santangelo said.

”At this point, no one’s claimed the shoes,” Santangelo said.

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COMMENT

19 comments to "Shoes on a Florida Expressway"

  1. Doom
    January 2nd, 2009 at 3:08 pm

    Shit, I was wondering where i left those...

  2. shawnisboring
    January 2nd, 2009 at 4:02 pm

    They missed him again

  3. Vim
    January 2nd, 2009 at 4:06 pm

    could be some sort of protest...or some prank joke. kinda weird that no one noticed these shoes being dumped in the highway. :D

  4. Corinne
    January 2nd, 2009 at 4:20 pm

    I hope that when they clean them up, they give them to needy people, rather than throwing them in a landfill or something.

  5. Jennfre
    January 2nd, 2009 at 4:41 pm

    I'd bet it's one of those "smoking kills this many people" demonstrations.

  6. AJ
    January 2nd, 2009 at 4:55 pm

    There was a Christian marathon this morning. It's the Rapture. We're all doomed.

    Yeah, shoes aren't needed on Heaven's pillowy clouds.

  7. Edward
    January 2nd, 2009 at 5:12 pm

    It is Art.

    Those of you without proper artistic taste will never appreciate its message.

  8. Skipweasel
    January 2nd, 2009 at 5:15 pm

    Soon to be renamed the Imelda Marcos Parkway.

  9. liphttam1
    January 2nd, 2009 at 5:57 pm

    Give them to the poor.

  10. SenorMysterioso
    January 2nd, 2009 at 6:00 pm

    ooo a mystery, call the scooby gang or the Hardy boys.

    I remember at the height of the beanie baby craze there was a huge truckload of them spilled on the highway. It wouldnt have been a problem except for all the pedestrians trying to loot stuffed animals in the middle of 60mph traffic.

  11. Paul in Boca
    January 2nd, 2009 at 6:04 pm

    Aren't they destined for Iraq?

  12. idil
    January 2nd, 2009 at 6:22 pm

    Protest against Bush, definitely.

  13. Chad
    January 2nd, 2009 at 7:42 pm

    you already told us about these guys.

    see:
    http://www.neatorama.com/2008/12/30/in-a-public-space/

  14. rob
    January 2nd, 2009 at 9:54 pm

    you're all wrong, it was a localized Rapture.

  15. SparkS
    January 2nd, 2009 at 10:14 pm

    Skipweasel "Soon to be renamed the Imelda Marcos Parkway." There's goes my thunder. GGGG

    SenorMysterioso "... or the Hardy boys."
    You are an old one. Funny but old. GGGGG

    Corinne ".. they give them to needy people, ..."
    I'm with you. Send them up North where it's really cold. Who needs shoes where it never get's below 75?

    FWIW I don't think it was a protest or prank. Imagine how long it would take to collect that many used shoes.
    That's a lot of leather! I think they fell off a truck probably being driven by an illegal alien that didn't want to stick around.

  16. Hime
    January 2nd, 2009 at 10:21 pm

    SparkS -
    Shoes won't do you any good up here. Your toes would freeze off, we need big warm boots.

  17. SenorMysterioso
    January 2nd, 2009 at 11:11 pm

    Hime, theyre not for wearing, theyre for eating

    Im really not that old Sparks. I just went to a public elementary school that hadnt had a new book since the 40s

  18. Daniel Kim
    January 3rd, 2009 at 9:19 am

    The Washington Post reported that the shoes will be taken to a vacant field, where they will be picked up by a nonprofit group called Soles4Souls.

    "Soles4Souls, which has distributed millions of pairs of shoes around the world, will ship the massive batch of shoes by truck to a processing facility in Alabama. There the organization will decide where to distribute them."

  19. SparkS
    January 3rd, 2009 at 10:39 pm

    Hime - Good point but if you had no shoes they would be quite an improvement.

    SM - Lots of good books from the 40's. That was just a guess based on my knowing that a lot of great movies were made in the 40's.


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