This is a story about a girl who lives on the highest floor of a building that used to be a spaghetti factory. This girl gently closes her eyes when the shadows are changing into lights on her face as a J train greets Brooklyn on the Williamsburg Bridge. This girl loves how the costumes she has created sparkle during the grand finale of a Broadway musical show. She rolls down the window of a huge car she’s driving to exhale smoke, and she turns on the radio. While walking in Bushwick, you have to smile when you notice glittery curbs, and dirt mixed with pink sparkles. You’re probably on the street where she has her studio.
This is a story about Tescia Seufferlein and her sparkly shoes.
Shoe tossing might be the most popular sport in Brooklyn. Shoe tossing, or shoefiti, is a practice where sneakers whose shoelaces have been tied together are thrown on overhead wires and cables so that they hang. A little bit of Internet research shows that this used to mark gang territories or places where one could buy drugs. But the newly arrived artistic community adopted this habit, perhaps not realizing the other meanings, and hanging sneakers have not disappeared from Brooklyn’s telephone cables. To the contrary, shoefiti has become a common Brooklyn sight.
One sunny November morning last year, the first rays of sun covered Bogart Street in millions of colorful lights reflected by dozens of sparkly high-heeled shoes hanging proudly next to dirty old sneakers. I remember riding my bike underneath them and yelling with joy! To me, it felt like a beautiful Brooklyn chick had stood up to a bunch of stoners who hadn’t showered for three days and said to them: “Stop! Bushwick is going to be classy from now on.”
Bushwick girls started to discuss whether the sparkly shoes were their size, and if it would be too dangerous to climb up and get a pair. Bushwick guys started to Google “sparkly shoes” like crazy, trying to find out who dared to hang them. All of Bushwick was talking about them, taking photos and uploading them on Twitter and Facebook and blogs.
Many of the shoes were knocked down by the trucks driving to and from the factories in the industrial part of Bushwick, but Tescia says she doesn’t mind. Purple editions of the sparkly shoes appeared on the wires in front of the Bushwick galleries just before Beat Nite. And a here comes a sneak peak: soon we might get a spring edition of sparkly shoes!
And how does one do it? Simply. Watch the video that Bushwick Daily borrowed from Tescia.