Why the fuck are people waving their shoes at DJs?!

We all know how truly wondrous a festival can be. They transform quiet patches of land into utopian havens of good music and nice people off their faces, eagerly telling each other they “fucking love you” and suggesting “Trump should just eat one of those pills in the shape of his own head, man”.

Such febrile atmospheres are when primal instincts are unlocked, humans band together and things get a little silly. This year we’ve seen people popping backflips and someone dishing out bites of a loaf of bread to fellow ravers among the masses. In 2017 it feels like the well-coordinated crowd chant of years gone by is a bit tame. The time is ripe for a new gesture of gratitude – one that still embodies the inclusive collectivism of the dancefloor - and the people have delivered.

Enter the humble shoe, specifically one battered, beaten and bearing the marks of many a festival or rave. From Glastonbury to Dekmantel, ravers have been using their trainers like a pagan offering to the deities of good tune selection this summer. If shoes are raised, the DJ is being praised.

The shoe has been a symbolic totem of partying in Australia for sometime now. The ‘Shoey’ is a drinking pastime as Australian as ‘goon of fortune’ or ‘waiting for a mate’. It’s a simple process: take old shoe, pour beer into said shoe, guzzle beer down from shoe while your mates Shane and Gareth cheer you on like a pair of feral possums. Australia has taken the shoey to heart to the point where I wouldn’t be surprised to see the country change its flag to incorporate a shoe and beer like the one from that episode of The Simpsons. Chaos In The CBD did one with vodka at the beginning of the year and even Stormzy did one the other day. Shoes are now regularly thrown on stage for visiting artists to use as a vessel for whatever their choice of tipple.

But despite the ingenuity displayed by a shoey, the vulgarity of it as a drinking ritual has seen it evolve and transform this side of the world. Normally accompanied by general hollering and whooping, it’s a sight to behold to see a sea of shoes pumping skywards. It’s a scene of pure euphoria and, let’s face it, spur of the moment stupidness. But the idea that you would take your shoe off, potentially soaking your socks through with mud all in the name of a laugh is exactly the kind of IDGAF mindset you want to achieve at a festival. It’s an act that tells the artist, “this is so good, I will gladly risk trench foot for it”. A gesture that shows you’re at ease with the musty stank of your new neighbour’s boot.

The earliest sign of a good shoeing (née shoey) doing the rounds on the internet was in June when a damp crowd lost their shit to the stylings of Australia’s Harvey Sutherland And The Bermuda Festival at Gottwood in Wales. The video was only four seconds long but an instant highlight, capturing the inebriated eco-system only the best festivals cultivate. We don’t know if it was started by someone who had just done a shoey or was confused as to what a shoey was. We don’t know if the person who started it was Australian. What we do know is that it was exactly what the summer festival circuit was missing.

Naturally we saw the practice again at Glastonbury, the world’s biggest breeding ground for levels of silliness. Over at Peggy Gou’s set a new wrinkle was added, with punters chanting the truly delightful play on words ‘Peggy Shoe’ at the same time. As documented on Gou’s Instagram, it was fun, it was irreverent and it was life-affirming because it didn’t matter how fucked up you were, you could just thrust some footwear into the sky and be a part of this thing. You didn’t even have to drop a fiver on a plastic inflatable animal that would only get used once before discarding into one of the world’s never-ending landfills. A shoeing is so Glasto, my dudes.

I hadn’t actually seen a shoeing in the flesh until recently and I certainly wasn’t expecting it to be at the uber-hip Dekmantel festival. But as Palms Trax got the crowd into the swing of things with a sunny afternoon set, they appeared before my eyes like blossoming flowers. First I spotted an Adidas Samba down the front, then a Nike at the back. And then, right next to me a girl took off her Reebok Classic and let out a shriek of appreciation for Ditongo’s ‘Longo’. The shoe had gone continental. She told me the entire crowd had been doing it for Motor City Drum Ensemble earlier in the day. I asked her why. She replied: “Why not?”

I paused for a moment, pondering the dampness of the ground underfoot and whether I still had the strength to take off my Vans that I’d tied up like combat boots. In the end I didn’t, but if I had a Roshe Run or maybe a Adidas Gazelle on, there’s no denying I would have gotten involved.

As we move into the winter months it will be interesting to see what becomes of the humble shoe. Festivals are winding down and clubs are normally a bit more reserved and chin-strokey than the balls-to-the-wall attitude punters adopt when raving in a field. Plus the idea of soaking through your sock with a night’s worth of spilled vodka sodas, only to go home and find out you’ve ruined your ‘going out shoes’ isn’t particularly appetising. This cultural phenomenon could just be a fad and we’ll find new things to thrust at our DJs like toothbrushes or bumbags. But with footwear almost ever-present, I don’t think so. Hopefully, unlike fidget spinners or Theresa May, shoeings will still be around next summer and I’ll be able to bond with my fellow raver once again.

Louis Anderson-Rich is Mixmag's Digital Intern and is wondering how a Birkenstock would be received mid-shoeing. Follow him on Twitter