Love locks - basically just vandalism?

[SnoozingFox]

Piece on the One Show about those people who attach padlocks to bridges and it's being pushed as an "awwww isn't this lovely, it's a gesture of love, people come back every year to see their lock, such as shame when they have to be removed" and I'm sitting thinking the opposite.

It's no different from scratching your initials into the bricks of a castle, or spray painting a wall. Vandalism. Nobody cares that some random bridge is where you had your first date or your boyfriend proposed. Nobody wants to walk across a city centre bridge covered in padlocks which the council then eventually have to pay to remove.

Leave no trace.

That's the thing, though. Whatever the technical rights and wrongs of doing it, ONE couple has 'claimed' this as 'their' love-bridge, with a simple unobtrusive romantic gesture - and it's already been done.

The same as the very first person who painted 'Live, Laugh, Love' on their living room wall was original and quite sweet with their sentiment - but when every gift shop and seaside 'walkaround store' in the English-speaking world has them stacked up on pallets to the ceiling, the sentiment is somewhat diluted, shall we say?!

the video someone posted about this issue in Prague showed the guy collecting the scrap metal, cashing it in with a scrap metal dealer, and using the cash so he could buy more bolt cutters to clean up the bridge more quickly with multiple people doing the cutting.

@BeatrizBoniface I'm aware of that lol, some people just seem way too angry about this. I think it's sweet and it doesn't offend or concern me in the slightest ☺️

Ah well. Different strokes and all that. One person's padlock is another person's love heart graffiti or glitter bomb.
(Although you could tell other folks on here to lighten up, not just me......)

Interesting - that's one practical solution, I suppose!

Do they have a grace period for the locks to stay there, though? Everybody allowed 48 hours before removal? Would they even know when they were first attached?!

It would probably lose some of its allure if he was there waiting at the end of the bridge, wielding his bolt cutters, ready to pounce as soon as the loved-up couple steps off the bridge. What if the couple took great exception to this and a fight ensued?

And what if a rival scrap metal dealer decided to get in on the act, so there's a couple experiencing their tender romantic symbolic moment whilst two blokes are looming over them and waiting to steal a march on the other guy?!

I think, if this is going to work realistically long-term, the only practical solution is for couples to attach their lock, take a couple of minutes to take all of their photos for the memories/Instagram, and then unlock it and take it home again with them for their mantelpiece/memories box/shed. Surely that's got to be preferable to knowing that a scrappie will cut it off and put it in his sack along with all of the others before you've even left for home?

What, even if your local council had to increase the council tax to pay for constant removal of the locks - or had to make the savings elsewhere, say, by closing public toilets?

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?

@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.

Wouldn't

Is it 'a few', though?

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

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?

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.

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.

@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 🙄

I also agree about "shrines" of flowers, teddies and balloons. I don't have an issue with them being placed for an anniversary or a specific day. But the people who do place them should return and remove, and they never do, so it just becomes litter. It is clearly very sad when people die, especially when they are very young or the circumstances are tragic. But it is unfair and unreasonable to expect strangers using a park or driving along a road to be as grief-stricken as the family/friends are.

The first time I really saw anything like this was after the death of Diana, all those acres of flowers. That was probably the start of these mass displays of candles/teddies/flowers/balloons. I'm not sure how you'd stop it though, if you're the parent of a child lost in tragic circumstances the last thing on your mind would be to say - no "tributes", please make a donation to X charity instead.

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!

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.

@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.

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 🙄

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 hate them they look awful

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.

Thank goodness for the voice of reason!

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.

At least yarn bombers usually return to remove the decorations - at least they do around here.