Love locks - basically just vandalism?

I agree in general - it's ugly and a structural problem for many bridges and monuments. The one exception is the Hohenzollern railway bridge in my hometown: https://www.cologne-tourism.com/arts-culture/sights/detail/love-locks

It's encouraged here (despite some moaning in recent years). We even have some nice romantic songs about it. I cannot confirm if my teenage love and I are still named here - couldn't find it if I wanted to!

Well said!

Let people make their shrines at their own homes, not tat up public property.

To PPs... I'd put a photo up but it works be outing.

The park where this awful memorial is known locally for birdwatching and wetlands. There's a lovely walking loop right around the edge of it. This memorial spans both sides on the loop. If you want to walk the loop, you have to walk through it. And let me be clear... there are no teddies and balloons... just piles and piles of plastic flowers, some of which are in 'planters' specially brought for the purpose. But with cellophane over the top to keep them dry. Loads of bunting and streamers, and probably dozens and dozens of laminated photographs of the deceased young man and his 'stoner'-looking mates making v signs to the camera stapled to the trees. Loads of handmade signs with his nickname on, think Wozza or something like that. No plaque. It looks really really shit.

Contrast this to two new benches that have appeared in another park over the last year, that occasionally have a little bunch of fresh flowers tied to them with twine, or a single plastic flower tied on with a zip tie... all regularly replaced, really not interfering with anyone else's enjoyment and pretty subtle.

I didn't know that young man. The way his family remember him is not what I would do. People die for all sorts of reasons all the time. I just don't want to see, process, and have to walk through mounds of gaudy tat at my local nature reserve.

Maybe I'm just a horrible person, but I can never for the life of me understand why somebody would see an actual mountain of tonnes of flowers as far as your eye can see - in front of the palace gates or in a public park or wherever - and their instinct is that they must go and get another bunch to toss up on top of it.

Why would you do this?

I still remember the lunacy of the people chucking bunches of flowers at the windscreen of the hearse for Diana's funeral. A lot of people complained afterwards about the driver being 'deeply disrespectful' for sensibly putting the wipers on to sweep them away so that he could actually see to drive safely. It's a stupid thing to do in any circumstances; but seriously, at the funeral for somebody who died in a car crash?!

As I said before, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Myself and many other Nuremberg residents liked the bridge. Many now like the balloon fixture instead. Some of you are very rigid thinkers. One man's fish is another man's poisson

Neither of those pictures are remotely lovely. And one is just a zoomed in version of the other

Correct. That, and 'yarn bombing'. Our high street is regularly defaced by knitted, schmaltzy tat, usually 'celebrating' Armistice Day, or a royal event, or something like that. There's no consultation on what designs might be appropriate - the stuff just appears and then sits on post boxes, railings, etc, until it goes manky. It was a fun thing once, now it's just another way to vandalise public space.

Thank goodness for the voice of reason!

I don't think it's down to me or you to decide what makes a 'lovely tribute' for anyone else.

No, but differences of taste are precisely why it’s selfish to take over public space in this way. They can make a lovely tribute precisely to their tastes in their home or garden. Or some designated space. Or publicly for a brief time. But uglifying a park used by all - and many, if by no means all, people ARE going to find solar lights and cellophaned teddies ugly - isn’t on.

Someone decorates a fir tree in our local park every Christmas. They’ve got no taste and can’t reach the top of the tree so you get an effect of baubles haphazardly placed around the lower half. It looks shit and I find the idea that they’re unilaterally entitled to do this utterly selfish. Either that or they’re deluded that everyone will be as enchanted as they are. At least that only happens around Christmas though.

I hate them they look awful

There are a couple of roadside shrines near us. They are never cleared, just added to. I hate to think of the harm it does to wildlife when the plastic flower wrappings and ribbons start shredding and have bits blowing off. It also looks awful. There’s a couple of faded, limp teddies there also. A pile of litter is not how I’d choose to remember my late DP.

I don't think it's controversial to say that a dead bunch of flowers and a mouldy teddy look shit, however long they've been left there 🙄

@MegTheForgetfulCat I don't think it's down to me or you to decide what makes a 'lovely tribute' for anyone else.

Things can go mouldy very quickly in damp weather so it's not an indication of it not being regularly maintained, which as you corrected yourself...it is.

OK just spotted she does actually say in the last para that it is regularly updated, but clearly not often enough if it's all mouldy, so my point still stands.

No, she said it was changed for xmas and then left for a few weeks, and is otherwise soggy and mouldering.

The one that was regularly changed is the one I was talking about (and that one is OK, as I said). But if you think a load of soggy tat and dying flowers makes a lovely tribute then you do you!

@MegTheForgetfulCat she said they are regularly changed, she clearly just doesn't approve of the sort of items that are being left. So it's a question of taste rather than simply leaving things to rot.

Crack on and complain if it bothers you so much. Will you be happy when the tributes of a bereaved family are removed just because it's such a terrible inconvenience for you to see them 🙄

Yes, people's preference not to see rotting flowers covered in plastic wrapping does trump the family's apparent "right" to leave what is basically a load of litter in a public place. There is one of these in my local town in memory of a murder victim that has a plaque put there with permission from the council. It is always looked after by the family, with flowers changed etc so they always look ok. This is not the sort of thing the PP is talking about, but the ugly-looking "cellotaphs" where the flowers are wrapped in plastic and left indefinitely and naff teddies gone soggy in the rain etc. They look awful and are not exactly a fitting tribute to anyone!

People may have paid for the bench as a memorial, but it's not a gravestone. These things usually come with stipulations that you are not to try to commandeer the bench as a shrine to your lost loved one. It's meant to be a bench for everyone to be able to use and enjoy.

It's made clear for example when people pay for a tree to be planted (in a place where lots of memorial trees are being planted) that there is no specific tree allocated to each family. This is deliberate to stop people putting plastic tat around "their" tree.

So your preference not to see this trumps a family's need to grieve however they see fit?

They've probably bought the bench from the council as a memorial bench. If you don't like the displays I'm sure you could complain but ask yourself what kind of person that would make you?

The reason they do it in the park and not in their own home is, I suspect, because they want people to see and remember their loved one.

Can I just add.

Shrines. Not actually official religious ones, but shrines that families and friends assemble to the deceased in public parks and at roadsides.

In one of our local parks, a family have commandeered a park bench and a stand of half a dozen trees, and covered them in laminated photos, plastic flowers and other trinkets to memorialise a young man who was apparently killed in a scrambler bike accident. The display was changed for Christmas when a stuffed grinch appeared for a few weeks.

I hate it. I hate that this family have taken over a corner of a lovely park for their own ends. I hate seeing the plastic tat, the solar garden lights, the dozens of things stapled to trees, and cans of monster left as offerings for their deceased friend. I hate seeing the soggy and mouldering stuff lying there covered in cellophane as it is, although it's regularly updated and changed.

It's a public space. Do this in your own garden or front room... why do they have more of a right to leave it all there than I do to not see it?

Is it 'a few', though?

There's a chap in Prague who appears to make a living from cutting them all down!

Wouldn't

@DalzielOrNoDalzielAndDontPascoe having worked in local authority for many years, I'm fairly certain that occasionally clipping a few locks off a bridge would be a major factor in raising council tax or shutting other public facilities. They are many other illegal/anti social things going on that cost much more.

So nasty and tacky, some cheap looking lock with Sam luvs Daz 4 eva scrawled on it in red nail varnish in amongst a thousand other locks all bought from the same place and equally cheap and tacky looking. Why would anyone over 15 think this was a good thing to do?