{"id":14616,"date":"2014-05-22T09:00:47","date_gmt":"2014-05-22T08:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?p=14616"},"modified":"2014-05-22T11:29:03","modified_gmt":"2014-05-22T10:29:03","slug":"new-york-city-joins-the-global-war-on-the-love-padlock-craze-and-orders-them-off-brooklyn-bridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/new-york-city-joins-the-global-war-on-the-love-padlock-craze-and-orders-them-off-brooklyn-bridge\/","title":{"rendered":"New York City joins the global war on the Love Padlock craze and orders them off Brooklyn Bridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"New<\/p>\n

Increasingly, lovestruck lovers around the globe have been scrawling their names on to small ‘love padlocks’ and affixing them to popular tourist bridges – and it’s something that isn’t going down a storm with The Man.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"New<\/p>\n

Love padlocks\u00a0first started appearing en masse<\/em> on European bridges in the early 2000s, supposedly echoing a tale of heartbreak<\/a> from World War 1.<\/p>\n

The ‘romantic’ idea behind them is that a\u00a0couple writes their names on a padlock and then locks it onto the structure of a bridge before throwing the key into the river.<\/p>\n

The idea is that this gesture\u00a0is\u00a0a symbol of their undying love. Or something equally mawkish.<\/p>\n

\"New<\/p>\n

The \u00a0craze has now become\u00a0increasingly popular around the world<\/a>, with some bridges being absolutely plastered with untold amounts of locks.<\/p>\n

\"New<\/a><\/p>\n

The Ponts des Arts bridge in ‘romantic’ Paris was one of the first bridges to find itself covered with metre after metre of rusting locks.<\/p>\n

With its metal work straining under the weight of\u00a0thousands of locks, local officials decided that enough was enough and employed workers with bolt-cutters to remove them<\/a> – something that has proved a\u00a0somewhat ineffective\u00a0measure as new locks swiftly return<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0No Love Locks<\/a>\u00a0campaign has now been started\u00a0to try and persuade people to lock off<\/em> and leave their metallic love gestures\u00a0at home.<\/p>\n

\"New<\/p>\n

Back in 2007, it got so\u00a0bad on the Ponte Milvio bridge over the Tiber river that Rome’s Mayor Walter Veltroni introduced fines for anyone leaving a padlock there<\/a>, and the Love Padlock Wikipedia page<\/a> has photos of bridges all over the globe coming under attack from the love-lockers.<\/p>\n

\"New<\/p>\n

In New York, Brookyln Bridge has proved to the the love padlock hotspot, with vast amounts of small locks being affixed to the bridge’s\u00a0cables and structure.<\/p>\n

New York City Department of Transportation have tried to call time on this practice, and posted\u00a0up on the Facebook page for the Brooklyn Bridge to remind would-be padlockers that it is illegal to attach anything to the bridge, while voicing safety concerns about the decaying metal locks.<\/p>\n

\"New<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\"New<\/p>\n

\"New<\/p>\n

What do you think to these things?<\/p>\n

Is it a\u00a0wonderfully romantic testament to the power of love?<\/p>\n

Discuss the\u00a0love lock phenomenon\u00a0on the urban75 forms<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[—<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Increasingly, lovestruck lovers around the globe have been scrawling their names on to small ‘love padlocks’ and affixing them to popular tourist bridges – and it’s something that isn’t going … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[56,17,193],"tags":[683,860,859,1199,224],"class_list":["post-14616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-york","category-photos","category-places","tag-brooklyn-bridge","tag-love-locks","tag-love-padlocks","tag-new-york","tag-paris"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/love-padlocks-brooklyn-bridge-011.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-3NK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14616"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14627,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14616\/revisions\/14627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}