Shoeys, sadly, seem to be ingratiating themselves deeply in Australian music culture. You know what I’m talking about: the plainly vile act of pouring some kind of alcoholic beverage in your recently-worn shoe and drinking out of it. If you’ve been at any kind of medium-to-large sized gig in the past year or so, you undoubtedly would have heard someone call for the band onstage to do a shoey. If you were at Splendour in the Grass over the weekend, you definitely would have: Amyl & the Sniffers did one, as did Yungblud. (Thankfully, Superorganism declined.) Post Malone did one when he was here, too, as did Stormzy. It’s a damn shoey epidemic. The phenomenon started as a thing Formula 1 racers did when they won competitions, but hey: unless you’re winning a fuckoff huge amount of money, I don’t think your shoey is really justified.
Now, the ABC has found that, well, yes: shoeys are fucking gross. In a new report titled “The shoey: Why it’s a bad idea to copy Daniel Ricciardo’s F1 podium ritual”, reporter Shaun Giles concludes that not only are shoeys are deeply yuck, but also––again, unsurprisingly––that they’re very bad for your health. After analysing a shoey-d shoe, Western Sydney University’s clinical academic gastroenterologist Dr Vincent Ho said “I wouldn’t recommend drinking out of a shoe that’s been immersed in alcohol.”
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Ho found that while some alcohols––vodka, namely–– can neutralise the bacteria from a shoe, most alcohols are still gonna leave you open to getting some pretty nasty diseases, including staph. Which is bad. In addition, the quicker you drink from a shoe, the more likely you are to consume some kind of bacteria, so unless you’re sipping from that checkerboard Van, you’re probably not doing yourself any favours.
The moral of the story here? Shoeys are fucking disgusting, you shouldn’t be doing them, and if you get staph from doing one, then you deserve it.
Shaad D’Souza is Noisey’s Australian editor. Follow him on Instagram.
