St. Louis Museum Has World on a String After Setting Shoelace Record
The City Museum added to its list of world records, and having the longest-ever shoelace will surely make it a bigger tourist attraction than the Louvre in Paris or the Met Museum in New York.
By Gabe Herman · August 7, 2024
Disclaimer: While this article is tied up with facts, it is also laced with satire… mind your step!
The great city of St. Louis is known for many things, but now it can put having the world’s longest shoelace at the very top of its list of achievements.
The City Museum manufactured a shoelace that is 2,729 feet long. “It wasn’t as easy to manufacture this shoelace as you might think,” said a museum employee, even though nobody was thinking that it was easy to manufacture.
It took about 24 hours to make the way-too-long shoelace using old textile machines. The museum is in the former Annex of the International Shoe Company building, and its second floor contains the Shoelace Factory, so this site was a perfect fit for this world-record achievement. Not literally a perfect fit, of course, because creating a half-mile long shoelace seemingly serves no practical benefit or use other than to generate brief local news coverage.
For the ends of the shoelace, custom aglets had to be made, which was a further waste… I mean, use, of materials and manpower.
Officials from Guinness World Records used the Eads Bridge in St. Louis to measure the inappropriately long shoelace, as a way of honoring the city. “Um, thanks,” the city responded. “Can you further honor us by not letting this story get out into the general public?”
The City Museum has previously set other Guinness World Records, including longest seesaw, largest tennis racket, biggest group of people with underwear on their heads, and longest pencil. One more silly record may put it in danger of no longer being allowed to call itself a “museum.”
“This is a dream come true,” said one museum employee. “I studied art for years in school, and then abroad, as I devoted myself to learning several languages and all manner of art styles and histories, only to now work at a quote-unquote museum that makes half-mile-long shoelaces. This is truly what I’ve hoped for all my life.”