Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/13/removing-love-locks-from-bridg.html
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Fact: Every time you cut off a love lock some couple’s marriage spontaneously ends in divorce.
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Aww, all those lovers doomed.
ETA: I wonder who the very first couple was, and if they’d fess up to creating this trend if they were alive today?
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This is why can’t have nice things.
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The closest infestation of this to me (that I know of) is in Bakewell, Derbyshire.
https://www.whatsonbakewell.co.uk/local-information/love-lock-bridge
It was OK to start with, but now it’s just a bit well…tacky really. I don’t think it will stop while the local shops make some money out of it, and it does attract the tourists. (You need to cross the bridge if you use one of the town’s main car parks and then want to walk to the town centre.)
So, I suggest, that if we must have lovelocks, let’s have these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovelock_(hair)
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They should put up signs:
We will brutally chop off your love locks and then your passion will DIE!!!
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Lock-blocked.
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Good. Never understood why this particular form of littering and/or vandalism isn’t more frowned upon.
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These vandals should be locked up.
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Now it’s against the rules to put padlocks on bridges.
Just, like, generally? International law?
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Most cynical example of this trend is by Shoreditch High Street station, where couples romantically affix padlocks to the chain-link fence of a 5-a-side football pitch under a railway viaduct. I’m sure it has NOTHING to do with the fact that there’s a locksmith selling padlocks just across the road.
(tho recently the locksmith has closed and been turned into a BYOB indoor crazy golf course because shoreditch)
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In 2014 the Des Arts bridge in Paris collapsed from the weight of padlocks people attached to it.
Well, part of the parapet collapsed, and there were worries about the structural stability of the bridge itself, but the whole thing didn’t collapse. 
Another factor was that couples attached the locks then threw the keys in the river. Everlasting commitment, and all that.
Thousands of corroding keys have measurably affected the water quality…
I kind of like Toronto’s solution, of a free-standing structure (a frame in the shape of the word ‘LOVE’), well away from any watercourse; anyone who simply has to engage in the cliche can do so relatively harmlessly.
[At the risk of spamming with my own photo, this is what it looks like.]
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Was probably a nearby lock vendor who put up the first couple dozen…
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Some people hate the mere evidence of love. Sad…
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Gesture of commitment to sweetheart results in Ball and Chain
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If you didn’t want to get married you should have said.
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Not a problem here, my hubby knows she has the key to my heart.
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I am thinking that there should be a “lockpicking competition” sanctioned by the municipality where picking the locks or otherwise non-destructively relocating them would be permitted/encouraged prior to the destruction of them on regular intervals.
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There could be quite a horror story about someone who steals a love lock, makes a new key for it, and uses it for their bike lock… and the on again / off again relationship between the two hapless lovers that results… 
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Only if they are students at Yale.
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