suspended toy

This is something of a puzzle - a small green rubbery toy suspended on the telephone wires outside Intelligentsia, our local coffee house in Silver Lake.   When I first was in Los Angeles, Alice told me that a pair of grubby sneakers hung over the wires was the sign of a drug dealer hanging out somewhere in the vicinity (I'm not at all sure whether that's true, or - there seem to be some exceptions to this, or at least places where I see sneakers and it's hard to imagine that a drug dealer could ever hover around there.   And there are some variations cropping up around L.A. of late - like sparkly painted high heeled ladies shoes.   But who knows?).   How to read this, however?   The coffee might count as a pretty good drug, but that may not be the point.  Does one decipher it the same way that one does the local surreal street art - as, simply, something disconcerting, though benignly provocative?