Love Picking on the Brooklyn Bridge - Saturday the 7th

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: Love Picking on the Brooklyn Bridge - Saturday the 7th

And in the end, look at the wonderful little works of art which have now all been preserved and are being kept, wrapped in soft red cloth until the art installation can be available...

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: Love Picking on the Brooklyn Bridge - Saturday the 7th

Well hell. I knew what love locks were so I didn't bother to read the Toool article. That was stupid of me. I apologize, Deviant, for making a judgement of your activity without doing my FULL due diligence. I never saw the part where you are relocating them. I really should know better!

Don't fret it... it turns out there is a LOT of conflicting emotion on this topic.

The trend was originally German and we've had a little good feedback from them. Our Irish lockpicker friends are major supporters, given that there's a group that has been taking locks off the Ha'Penny Bridge for a while now. However, the Dutch lockpickers were far less receptive, saying that they found the whole thing distasteful... even when the aim was to protect the locks.

At the request of the TOOOL NL leadership, we've temporarily made our gallery of photos from that day non-public (they didn't want photos of people in black TOOOL members' shirts picking public locks to appear in their local media, etc) and we have planned to include this topic in our leadership meeting at this year's LockCon when the Dutch and US Board of Directors are all together in the Netherlands.

I'm curious about any other feedback that this community here might offer... so much of "hacking" is interpreted as malicious by some while thought of as helpful by others, etc. What were some other people's feelings when they heard about this?

As you point out, many people are not aware that the fate of most love locks is simply this...

(we were not cutting locks, I might point out... you can find these cut and rusted shackles littering the bridge, left there by the city work crews)

It was really cool that day, to have so many members of the public come up to us and ask what was happening when they saw us there...

[eris]

Re: Love Picking on the Brooklyn Bridge - Saturday the 7th

I totally agree with that. What Toool is promoting though is picking the locks off of places where they would be destroyed by the city/location as 'vandalism/graffiti'. I would rather know that my lock was carefully removed and relocated than find out it had been cut and destroyed.

Well hell. I knew what love locks were so I didn't bother to read the Toool article. That was stupid of me. I apologize, Deviant, for making a judgement of your activity without doing my FULL due diligence. I never saw the part where you are relocating them. I really should know better!

[Salem]

Re: Love Picking on the Brooklyn Bridge - Saturday the 7th

"...those people come back to look at their lock of Love sometimes. It would be pretty hurtful to see it missing. "

I totally agree with that. What Toool is promoting though is picking the locks off of places where they would be destroyed by the city/location as 'vandalism/graffiti'. I would rather know that my lock was carefully removed and relocated than find out it had been cut and destroyed.

[eris]

Re: Love Picking on the Brooklyn Bridge - Saturday the 7th

I will say that when I first saw Lovelocks in my area, my first thought was lock picking practice.

But as Vandal said too, "Hey, that is a charity, and those people come back to look at their lock of Love sometimes. It would be pretty hurtful to see it missing. "

[Deviant Ollam]

Some folk who follow me or @TOOOL on Twitter may have seen this already... but allow me to mention here for anyone in the NYC area that tomorrow there will be a Love Picking event on the Brooklyn Bridge.

What is Love Picking? Read all about it here... http://toool.us/lovelocks.html

So, if you want to meet up with us tomorrow afternoon, look for smiling faces and bright red bags on the very middle of the Brooklyn Bridge starting at 4PM. Also, follow @TOOOL if you can't attend in person to (hopefully) see live-tweeting and photos of all the fun.