More progress on the shoefiti front. The Ace of Spades in the Deck of Most Wanted Shoes (The pair hanging in the alley at 31st St E between 4th & 5th Aves since March 28th) is finally gone!
Thanks to those of you who've reported shoes. I've heard some great offline success stories from other Minneapolis Issues members who've successfully removed shoes from their neighborhoods by contacting Xcel Energy. Shoefiti has been successfully dealt with using both Xcel Energy's customer support phone line 800-895-4999, and the streetlight outage form on their web site. Personally, I prefer the online form because it's faster and more precise than dealing with yet another customer service agent who can't figure out how to properly enter shoefiti service requests into their support system (and that's after working through the phone tree and spending a few minutes on hold). Xcel has requested this form not be used for shoefiti, but it seems like it will have to do until they add a separate form for non-outage related support requests. I still don't have any solid evidence explaining why the shoes appear on lines, but still consider it highly likely they signify some kind of nefarious activity in problematic neighborhoods of the city. The officer in the FOX 9 News report - after stating that Shoefiti is somewhat comical - mentioned that shoes are used to mark gang territory in Los Angeles. Wouldn't it make sense for gang members moving here from L.A. to bring their tactics with them? The shoefiti along E Lake St. between I-35W and Cedar certainly seems to correlate with gang graffiti in the area. Removing shoefiti one pair at a time. - Ed Kohler Shoeless in Cooper REMINDERS: 1. Be civil! Please read the NEW RULES at http://www.e-democracy.org/rules. If you think a member is in violation, contact the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:mpls@mnforum.org Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
