Wall Street Shoe Shine
Joseph Bucks had been a shoe shine man on Wall Street. For years he had quietly listened to stock brokers who stopped in for a shine. When Joseph began to invest his hard earned wages, he discovered he had a gift for picking winners. It didn't take long for Joseph to amass a small fortune, which he quickly turned into a much larger fortune.
To celebrate his origins and to say a fond farewell to the clients who had made him rich, he set up a shoe shine stand with fine furniture, lush plants, and a gold plated shoeshine kit at his favorite spot on Wall Street. He placed a sign on an easel which read "Joseph's Footwear and Grooming." He had a beautiful manicurist and he charged the outrageous sum of $5.00 for the shine.
Mr. Bucks (a.k.a. Joey Skaggs) pulled off this street theater with the help of friends and students from his Media Communications class at the School of Visual Arts. The piece was about inflation and conspicuous consumption. And, Skaggs' students got to learn first hand about accessing the media to deliver a message by actively participating in the satire. Working as shills, they paid $5.00 for a shine and told the reporters who had come that they thought it was a really good deal. Many hoped they could get a tip or two from Bucks himself. "A shine and tan at the same time for five bucks? I think it's great!" exclaimed friend Erin Clermont. Soon other people in the crowd wanted to have their shoes shined too. All the customers, pretend and real, were performing for the press.
And it was not the last time that students from the School of Visual Arts would get to hoax the news media. Skaggs taught there for years and frequently enlisted his students to work with him. Eventually, in 1994, the school created a class specifically for Skaggs called Culture Jamming and Media Activism, a first for any art school, anywhere.
© 1997 Joey Skaggs