Where there are love locks, there are police cutting them down. Sometimes, it’s to keep a bridge from collapsing, as the case is on Paris’ Pont des Arts. In typical New York City style, the love locks are being complemented by trash, bras, condoms and more on the Brooklyn Bridge these days. Still, while The Washington Post reports that more than 9,000 love locks have been cut from the Brooklyn Bridge since last winter, and The NY Daily News found last month that “only a small strip of the bridge walkway appears to be the unofficial lock zone,” we discovered this past week that the locks are creeping back into some more adventurous areas., like the lamp posts above the roadway.
Gothamist has a fun post from 2013 about hanging out with the lock removal team on the Brooklyn Bridge. Sometimes, the locks are pretty hard to take off. As reader Mark Roberts writes:
Some locks have resisted multiple attacks. Today’s recalcitrant restraints included a straight-shackle padlock perfectly fitted to a steel lattice fence (Chrissy and Dorian, nothing short of a blowtorch will part you!), and a fist-sized lever padlock apparently made in the 19th century that elicited the cry, ‘We’d be better off cutting the lamppost it’s attached to!’
For the NYC Department of Transportation, it’s an on-going process of removal. For love struck visitors, their symbols of undying love generally end in recycling bins.
