Paris Is Removing All The Love Locks From Its Major Bridges; Your Eternal Love Is Null And Void
Sorry. Your relationship has 48 hours left.
There are many ways to ensure a long and prosperous relationship. Ideally you should listen to each other and support one another in everything you do. You should be honest and open about what you want and how you feel. But — because honestly, that sounds like a lot of work — for decades now, millions of couples have taken another route to eternal love:
1. Buy a padlock off a guy on the street whose eyes are constantly darting around for police.
2. Inscribe it with your initials and those of your significant other with a cheap permanent marker.
3. Fasten it to a major piece of infrastructure without permission.
4. Celebrate your official union by brazenly littering, throw the key into a major body of water.
Though this strange tradition is now present all over the world with love locks popping up in most Australian cities, it all started out in Paris. Nearly all of the city’s major bridges are now coated in tonnes of heavy locks and it’s a major attraction for tourists, Honeymooners, and other people the locals desperately want to avoid.
Last year the sheer weight of these locks caused part of the most famous Pont des Arts bridge to buckle, and now the City of Love has had enough. Just as Melbourne decided last week, Parisian council officials have today announced the million locks on both the Pont des Arts and Pont de l’Archeveche near Notre Dame cathedral will be cut down some time this coming Monday. Over the next couple of months both bridges will be shut down while they replace the railing with panels covered in local street art.
“[The locks] led to two big problems: significant damage to our heritage, and a risk to visitors’ security,” said the council in a statement to the BBC.
This is something many Parisians are pretty chuffed about. A local community group No Love Locks has thousands of followers and posted the following excited statement on their Facebook page last night:
However, the news ain’t so great for anyone who took a loved-up trip to Paris in the past few years: your relationship will be null and void in less than 48 hours.
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Feature image via Flickr Creative Commons/Dave Appleby.