lost perspective
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back and forth, forth and back.
On yet another of my perambulations twixt ancient Greenpoint and Astoria, the path which presented itself carried me down Greenpoint Avenue and upon the loathsome expanse of the Long Island Expressway did I find myself staring aghast at. Shivering from chills which were not atmospheric in origin, a humble narrator feverishly crossed the pedestrian pathway between the on and off ramps, an island of safety in a sea of automotive sharks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the northern side of the street, yet another singular and abandoned example of the cobblers art was discovered.
Individual shoes are noticed nearly everywhere these days, by one such as myself, so much so that it seems as if some sort of sinister game might be afoot. Is there be some sort of registry for such matters? Some sort of federal list? Can an amputated consumer product such as a shoe be traced back to an owner? Detective fictions opine that this is the case, but who can guess?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wild speculation rules my reactions to these abandoned shoe sightings, lending fuel to flights of blasphemous fancy and outrageous possibility. Commonalities in the sightings of these orphaned singlets include their presence on out of the way, commonly traveled but seldom walked, streets. Most examples seem gently used (with the exception of the damage on the example today,) and that they are conspicuous.
There doesn’t seem to be a bias toward either the left nor right model.
The Newtown Pentacle 
[…] the Newtown Pentacle, wherein a seemingly discarded single shoe is left conspicuously placed. As mentioned often, my particular curse is to notice everything, and these castaway garments have captured no small […]
bewildering jarring | The Newtown Pentacle
June 27, 2013 at 1:28 am
[…] Prior discussion of the single shoe phenomena can be inspected here, here, here, and here. […]
dangerous aggregation | The Newtown Pentacle
July 9, 2013 at 7:31 am
[…] christened as “The Queens Cobbler.” Should my supposition be correct, and that the singular shoes which litter our streets are in fact some sort of grisly trophy or taunt to the gendarmé left […]
no end | The Newtown Pentacle
March 20, 2015 at 11:20 am