Paris may be the city of love, but the city is so concerned about love locks, those padlocks that lovesick couples attach to bridges as a token of their undying affection for one another, that officials have announced that they will be replacing the railings of one of their bridges with glass. Impenetrable glass to which you cannot attach shit. Looks like you’re going to have to find another cliche metaphor to express your feels.
Much like the dreaded cane toad, love locks started out rather harmless, but grew to be quite the trend and what some people view as an aesthetic vermin in cities around the world. Paris city officials had already encouraged people to find new and less annoying ways to express their love with their #lovewithoutlocks campaign, but Friday the city took a more straightforward approach. Officials announced a “trial experiment,” replacing panels loaded up with padlocks (that averaged about 500kg for each panel) with glass. Via New York Times:
“Paris is the capital of love, and we are all proud of that,” the city said in a statement issued a day after two glass panels appeared Thursday in the middle of the bridge. “But there are other, more beautiful ways of showing love than attaching padlocks.”
Translated: Get your silly fucking locks off our fucking bridges you unsophisticated hooligans, and come up with something original.
D’ac. While local Parisians, those concerned more with the historical integrity of the bridges, and people who simply think the love lock panels are straight fugly are welcoming the glass panels, others (like tourists) are disappointed to know that their $5 homage to love is to be taken down. Yes, the city is removing something charming and may be putting local lock sellers out of business.
A spokesman for the city stated the city will see how the glass panel experiment goes and then decide the fate of more love locked panels. I bet those people who put combo locks on the bridge feel real smart right now. I mean, if they wanted to go and retrieve their lock before possibly losing it forever. Who knows? Maybe it’ll show up as an installation piece somewhere else.
Image via Getty.
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