The Shoey

About

The Shoey is an Australian tradition wherein a person drinks an alcoholic beverage, often a beer, out of a shoe. It became more popular in the late 2010s as several musicians performed a shoey while on tour in Australia, leading to an investigative article by the New York Times.

Origin

The New York Times^[1] traces the origin of the shoey to the late 1990s. They interviewed the founders of Mad Hueys, a fishing and outdoors brand, who recalled doing them in the late 90s. They also pointed to a video of them doing one at a surfing competition in 2006 (shown below).

Spread

The New York Times also interviewed Brodie Lancaster who said he'd only seen it done at hardcore punk shows before it began seeing more attention. Formula One racer Daniel Ricciardo began doing shoeys in 2016, bringing the act to a global stage (shown below).

That same year, Australian boys known as the "Budgie Nine" were arrested in Malaysia for stripping and doing a shoey, briefly causing an international incident.^[2] On January 10th, 2018, Jimmy Fallon and Hugh Grant did shoeys on The Tonight Show (shown below, left). On January 21st, Australian band Frenchy and the Talent released a music video about the act, gaining over 380,000 views on YouTube (shown below, right).

Rapper Post Malone has regularly done shoeys while performing in Australia (shown below, left). In May of 2019, country artist Kacey Musgraves did one out of a glass slipper (shown below, right).

The New York Times ran its article on the history of the shoey on May 21st, 2019, which in turn led to a Twitter Moment^[3] which prompted Australians to criticize the shoey as an embarrassing representation of Australian culture (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References