Love Unlocked

I was interested to see that the NYC Department of Transportation has begun hanging new signs prohibiting, among other things, the attachment of “love locks” to the Brooklyn Bridge.

[Image: Banning love locks; photo courtesy of the NYC Department of Transportation].

Love locks, as I explored in a piece for the New Yorker a few summers ago—an article that was also later partially absorbed into the tools chapter of A Burglar’s Guide to the City—are “padlocks with names, initials, or messages of love written on them, clipped to pieces of urban infrastructure as a public sign of romantic commitment.”

In some cases, the locks have been expensively laser-etched; others are simply written on with Sharpie. “Carrina, will you marry me?” “Zach + Julie, Always + Forever.” They are poetic, forming quite beautiful, rose-like clusters—and they are doomed. In nearly all cases, they will be clipped by the city and disposed of, their magic and romance lost.

Love locks are a global phenomenon, and have been popping up in the news more and more recently, usually portrayed as “a scourge” or even “insipid.”

[Image: Love locks on the Brooklyn Bridge; photo by Nicola Twilley].

(Top photo spotted via Chris Woebken).