There seems to be a persistent connection between trainers (sneakers) and violence

Above:  one of the news items over the Christmas holiday was the fatal stabbing of a young teenager in a Foot Locker shop in Oxford Street.  The motives for the stabbing are unknown.  However the report caught my eye as there seems to be a persistent connection between trainers (sneakers) and violence.

Above:  one of the more bizarre aspects of the London riots is that the rioters did not on the whole steal food, or rob money, or target the institutions of the rich and powerful.  Instead they looted trainers (as reported in this article by Tessa Hadley in the New Yorker as well as many other news reports).  Why are trainers so desirable that they are worth risking a 12-month gaol (jail) sentence?

Above:  obviously trainers have been integral to youth culture for about thirty years (Chris Brown even starts his video for Yo Excuse Me Miss in a sports shoe shop - no idea what the hand sign means).  But the obsessive nature of the trainer cult seems at variance with other fashion trends which come and go as each part of the body is fetishised.  It's as if footware became sexualised and fetishised round about the year 1980 and the frenzy has never been switched off.

Above:  a Foot Locker TV commercial in which a young couple play out a sexual fantasy which involves the girl beating her partner with a succession of trainers.  What is happening here?  Why has violent contact involving trainers (in the context of harmless role-playing) become a substitute for more routine sexual contact?

Above:  if we accept that trainers first became mass consumer items circa 1980, what else happened at that date that might be relevant to this discussion?  Football (soccer) emerged at that time from a generally working-class spectator sport to a mega-consumer industry encompassing all social groups and with a 20% female following.  A report by the British Social Issues Research Centre revealed that 70% of Spanish football fans prefer watching the game to making love, which indicates some form of sexual sublimation (and obviously football is a game that is focussed on feet).

Above:  finally there is the 1998 study by Giannini, Colapietro, Slaby, Melemis and Bowman that links the fetishisation of feet with the prevalence of venereal disease.  The study only looked at the sexualization of the female foot, but I wonder if there is a correlation with the male foot also.  The venereal disease that became prominent in the early 1980s was of course AIDS, and fear of this disease has never really gone away.

So is there a connection between the arrival of AIDS, the associated fetishisation of feet, the subsequent consumer cult around trainers and football, and the increasing violence that is associated with sublimated homoerotic sexual frustration, particularly of young men? (note: stabbing is a form of sublimated penetration by one male of another).

Caveat:  these are just my thoughts.  I have no evidence for any of this.  I could well be wrong.