My girlfriend and I went out yesterday to steal love locks, then went to get some warm food and drinks afterwards (it was friggin' cold).

Lou 🏳️‍⚧️

@alice I was half expecting you to say that they shouldn’t because there are already too many locks rusting out there 🤭

Jim Gardner

@lianna @alice Those locks are basically litter. There’s a spot here in central Edinburgh tourists have started doing it. You think they come back for those? You think we the people living here want tourists to be leaving cheap, rusting locks on our fencing?

lianna

@jimgar @alice Are you the kind of people to raze your lawn to a grand total of 1mm and secretly cut down their neighbour's bushes when they grow in size?

God forbid couples leave a heartfelt memorandum of their relationship on public infrastructure and come back 10 years later to relive the memories. The poor road maintenance companies must be protected from young couples!

Jim Gardner

@lianna @alice Look at my profile picture and banner. Your questions will answer themselves

hackbyte

Hrmkay ... i don't like it .. stealing love locks just because they're easy to grab? Sorry no ... don't like it...

But why the heck do you take the newest ones straight from this year?

Why not at least take older ones first?

Jim Gardner

@lianna @alice I bet you would. From your profile you sound like a really nice person I’m a huge fan of native meadows and try to convince everyone I know with a garden to do their bit.

On love locks, I don’t really like them in my city centre because of the wider context. So first of all, they’re being put on some pretty old fencing and railing, and it’s fencing for pedestrians (only) that protects us next to a very steep set of stairs. It’s a quaint place to put them if you’re a visitor, but as a resident who uses that staircase I want to know the fencing isn’t under strain. Secondly, tourism in Edinburgh fucking sucks. The city centre is super congested all year round now, and while I don’t have anything against any individual visitors, as a whole they are loud, slow, and just generally incredibly annoying when I’m trying to live my normal life. Those will be the people leaving the love locks. It’s sweet, sure, but if you’re putting a padlock on public infrastructure in a place you’re visiting, I don’t think you should be naive enough to believe it’s going to be there if you ever choose to come back. And let’s be real, many of those people never will be back!

Mags at Large

@alice Seems a bit nasty. Sorry.

🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)

@jimgar
@lianna I'll add that the life of *almost* all of these locks (where I live) is measured in months at most before they rust into a little ball of tetanus risk. No one uses marine-grade locks, but they place them right over the salt water—in a city that rains like ⅓ of the year. So the bridge quickly becomes an ode to decay and less safe for the kids to cross, because there are rusty chunks of metal sticking out everywhere.

The city also comes by and destroys them.

I save what I can and preserve/restore them—eventually they'll all go in the local museum in a big installation to celebrate love and love locks.

(Sorry for being a dick)

the elder sea

@alice
Cities cut these off so regularly, especially in common locations. There is statistically no way a lock would be there ten years later.
@jimgar @lianna

🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)

@hackbyte no, stealing them because the city will destroy them (if they don't become a rusty lump first—which only takes a couple months).

If I take them, they'll go in a museum (after being restored if needed).

🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)

@eldersea it's true. Even without cutting, they're not marine-grade, and so most will only last a couple months this close to the ocean.

@jimgar @lianna

Miranda - sexy naked edition

@alice @jimgar @lianna

They can also be hazardous. In Paris, at some point they they had to close a footbridge across the Seine because it was threatening to collapse under the weight of the locks. They had to replace the safety barriers by some that can't be easily covered by locks.

Joshua Rose

@alice

This whole conversation is awesome and guves me all the feels. I look forward to seeing a love lock museum. Maybe

The Doctor

@lianna @alice Get caught putting one up and you get fined for vandalism. Plus, they get cut off when somebody with an office gets tired of looking at them.

🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)

@miranda there was also the girl who was riding her bike over a narrow bridge and got her arm torn open by one that was sticking out.

@jimgar @lianna

🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)

@tricethetraveller it's one of my life's goals to make an installation that makes the rounds to different museums, celebrating the beauty of these little chunks of metal and what they represent.

I want the Wikipedia page on love locks to have a section on it

su_liam

@alice When my son, who is too old for this, and his friend were grabbing coins out of a wishing… well, I didn’t say “don’t do that, it’s bad,” I said, “don’t get caught.”

su_liam

@lianna @alice Skating isn’t a crime, dude!

Aprazeth

@alice

I know everyone else is hyper focused on the locks and all, but can we take a moment to appreciate that cinnamon roll?

... Please tell me it tasted as good as it looks

Elle 💗

@lianna @alice Okay, so someone posted something they do that vibes to you initially as insensitive.

I would recommend when you come across something like that, on here or in real life, that you give the person in question the benefit of the doubt at first and ask a follow up question instead of jumping to "you're a dick who hurts people".

It doesn't mean that first impression will always be wrong, but I think it's worth it for us to try to understand each other first and judge second.