Bytes: Search results for love locks

Showing posts sorted by relevance for query love locks. Sort by date Show all posts

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Monday Miscellany - Some Odds, Ends and Personals

Some items on love . . .

An online news report last week:

Bride in hospital, groom and best man charged after Hobart wedding brawl

By Edith Bevin

A Hobart bride has been hospitalised and her groom and his best man charged with disorderly conduct following an alcohol-fuelled brawl at their wedding reception on Saturday morning.

Celebrations were in full swing when the bride became unwell just after midnight on Friday and guests called an ambulance.

When paramedics arrived they called for police backup because of the drunk and rowdy crowd.

Police said when they turned up some of the wedding party became aggressive and threw punches.

It took six police units to bring the situation under control, they said.

The groom and the best man were taken into police custody and have now been charged with disorderly conduct.

Police said the maid of honour was also spoken to but not taken into custody.

The bride is receiving treatment in the Royal Hobart Hospital for alcohol poisoning.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-29/bride-in-hospital-groom-and-best-man-locked-up-after-wedding/5927608

Whilst searching something on the net I came across the lovelock trees of Namsan in Korea. Love locks refers to the practice of attaching engraved padlocks and message locks, usually on an I Love You theme, to fences and other structures. I have previously written about such love locks being attached to the gabion walls of Ballast Point Park in Birchgrove.

Some trivia and pics:

The website 10 Most Today has listed 10 Awesome Love Lock locations

Pont des Arts Bridge, Paris, France -

The most famous love locks location in the world is located on this pedestrian bridge in Paris, over the river Seine. It is estimated that the weight of the locks on this bridge may reach 93 metric tons! In June 2014, part of the parapet that carries the padlocks collapsed under the weight

Hohenzollern Bridge, Cologne, Germany –

Love locks started appearing on this bridge over the river Rhine in Cologne, in the year 2009

N Seoul Tower, Seoul, South Korea –

Seven artificial “love trees” were put on the terraces of this tower in Seoul by the tower’s operators. Those artificial trees are capable of holding great weight, especially designed with the padlocks weight in mind. The tower’s operators also provided a “key bin” for the keys, so those won’t be thrown from the tower. The regular fences were also replaced by glass fences so that padlocks couldn’t be locked on the fence itself

Vodootvodny Canal, Moscow, Russia –

Another artificial “love tree”, this time on a bridge across the Vodootvodny Canal in Moscow. This is just one of many such iron trees

Mount Huang, China –

The fences on Mount Huang in China are packed with love locks. Sweethearts lock their soul together on one of the fences and throw away the key to the valleys below

Most Ljubavi, Vrnjačka Banja, Serbia –

Most Ljubavi, meaning “Bridge of Love”, is one of 15 bridges in the town of Vrnjačka Banja, in Serbia. The bridge is a major destination for love padlocks

Malá Strana district, Prague, Czech Republic –

Love padlocks can be found on a pedestrian bridge in the Malá Strana district

Monte Milvio Bridge, Rome, Italy –

Love locks are gaining more and more momentum in Italy, and it all started in the Ponte Milvio bridge in Rome. The ritual in Italy is inspired greatly by a fictional event in the popular book “I Want You” by the Italian author Federico Moccia

Butchers’ Bridge, Ljubljana, Slovenia -

This new pedestrians bridge has started collecting its share of love locks in 2010. The bridge crosses the Ljubljanica river

Brooklyn Bridge, NYC, New York, United States – Many love locks were locked to the Brooklyn Bridge, but they are now being removed due to safety concerns

As noted above, various places such as Paris and Brooklyn are removing padlocks, primarily because the tremendous weight of the locks is causing damage to structures. In Paris a part of the Point des Artes bridge fence and rail collapsed and fell to the ground below, thankfully not causing injury. Locks have also been removed from structures in Italy, Ireland, Canada and Australia. Additional reasons for removal include interference with heritage items and that many people consider them unsightly, such as the originators of the website No Love Locks at http://nolovelocks.com/about/

Pont des Artes in 2005

Pont des Artes since people began affixing locks from 2008

Imagine the weight.

Removal in Rome

Saturday, December 10, 2016

Locks

I have previously written about love locks. No, not the key to a chastity belt but those locks that lovers attach to fences etc as a symbol of their devotion to each other, that their love will remain as firm and eternal as the locks padlocked to the fences. The burghers of Paris, the City of Love, had different ideas. The weight of the locks was so great, causing safety concerns, that they removed all the locks and installed plexiglass covers on the fences on their bridges.

The original Bytes post about love locks can be read by clicking on:

http://bytesdaily.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/monday-miscellany-some-odds-ends-and_9.html

The item looks at love locks around the world and has some amazing pics.

The problem for the Paris authorities is that they are now sitting on a great quantity of locks that they don’t know what to do with. Until recently.

The officials have decided to offer the locks for sale to the public, either singly or in batches of 5 or 10, or even greater clusters if someone wants more. Bear in mind that these are modern locks that have been cut off the fences with angle grinders and boltcutters. Nonetheless the officials believe people will want to buy a piece of Parisian “cultural history”.

Proceeds will go to aid refugees in Paris.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/paris-selling-old-love-locks-raise-money-refugees-180961315/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20161207-daily-responsive&spMailingID=27270370&spUserID=NzQwNDUzNzA1MDkS1&spJobID=941623077&spReportId=OTQxNjIzMDc3S0

Paris as it was

Going . . .

A view of the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris from June 9, with frescoes replacing love locks that were removed.

While some tourists think the "Love Locks" are a Parisian tradition, it's actually a fad started in 2006 after the teenage lovers in the book I Want You by Italian author Federico Moccia attached their padlock to the Ponte Milvio in Rome. The book was made into a film in 2007, and by 2010 the practice spread to Paris. In 2014 the first panel collapsed under the weight on the Pont des Arts, but it didn't dissuade tourists from continuing to attach their padlocks to any surface they could find.

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The concept of love locks, not only for those in love but also as a memoriam to departed loved ones, spread to Sydney some years back, notably by being attached to the gabions (the wire baskets filled with rocks that you see alongside highways) at Ballast Point Park in Birchgrove.

They also started appearing on the Harbour Bridge and the Sea Cliff Bridge at Clifton on the South Coast but they were removed, officials citing safety concerns. Apparently weight is not the only issue, so is corrosion caused by the metal presence.

I don’t know if the ones in Ballast Point Park remain.

The place is well worth a visit, take a picnic lunch.

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Speaking of chastity belts, it is a myth that knights going off to the Crusades would lock up their ladies in chastity belts to ensure faithfulness. Such a prolonged incarceration would cause both health and hygiene problems, nor has any written reference been found in this context.

First use is believed to be in the 16th century but only rarely. What was a more widespread use was in the 19th century as anti-masturbation medical devices.

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Some lock humour:

A great locksmith name.

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Fence Week, continued: More Unique Fences

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We are coming near to the end of Fence Week, readers, the last instalment will be tomorrow. As far as Fence Week goes, it will be the last post (ha ha).

Hopefully you will have found the various posts interesting and informative,

Today’s fence post (ha ha) is another visual one, a look at some notable and distinctive fences around the world . . .

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The Buckingham Palace Fence:

Buck Palace has an impressive security fence designed to keep the uninvited out. Nonetheless at least 12 people have gained unauthorised entry into the palace or its grounds since 1914, The most famous of these entries was by Michael Fagan, who broke into the palace twice in 1982, entering the Queen's bedroom on the second occasion. At the time, news media reported that he had a long conversation with the Queen while she waited for security officers to arrive, but in a 2012 interview, Fagan said the Queen ran out of the room, and no conversation took place. It was only in 2007 that trespassing on the palace grounds became a specific criminal offence.

Meghan Markle, aged 15, photographed on a fence outside Buckingham Palace when visiting London in 1996. The security fence is further back.

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The Aquarium Fence:

Millionaire topographical engineer Mehmet Ali Gökçeoğlu bought a luxurious villa in Çeşme, Turkey, then In 2005, built a 50 metre aquarium fence filled with fish and octopuses that has become a tourist attraction in its own right. Located on the shores of the Aegean Sea, it is linked to the Aegean through a 400 metre-long buried pipeline so that the water is changed continuously. There is also a surveillance system to prevent damage by members of the public and tourists.

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The Lovelock Fences:

Love lock fences have existed for over 100 years but became popular and spread in the early 2000s. The practice involves locking a padlock onto a fence, bridge or other structure as a symbol of the love of the persons placing it, often with engravings of initials, names or comments.

Notwithstanding the sentiments and symbolism, many authorities have taken the view that it amounts to vandalism, as well as raising safety concerns by reason of the considerable weights involved.

By way of example, the locks on the Pont Des Arts bridge in Paris caused parts of it to collapse, causing the locks to be removed in 2015 and be replaced by a special type of glass.

Lovelocks on the Pont Des Arts

Another pic of the Pont Des Arts

I wrote about love locks in 2014, here is the link to that post and to some amazing photographs:

http://bytesdaily.blogspot.com/search?q=love+locks

Two years later I wrote about the removal in Paris, at:

http://bytesdaily.blogspot.com/2016/12/locks.html

Worth a look.

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The Bra Fence:

In 1999 people living in Central Otago, New Zraland, found four bras mysteriously hanging on a nearby fence along the Cardrona Valley Road in Otago. More people kept adding bras to the fence and the place became a major tourist attraction. For some it was just a quirky thing to do, for others it was a personal statement, sometimes of female empowerment.

The fence was a cause of controversy. Some local residents objected to its decency, some that it would upset Asian students at a nearby college, some that it presented the wrong image for the area and some that it was a traffic hazard with people slowing to view. However, local sheep farmer John Lee, who had become the unofficial guardian of the site, refused to remove the bras from the fence, claiming that 90% of letters received about the fence were positive, and that the bras were the most photographed attraction in the area.

The fence became so popular that eventually the traffic hazard argument held way and the fence was moved from the main highway to the driveway entrance of Kelly Spaans and Sean Colbourne's horse trekking and quad biking business "The Cardrona", where it can still be seen in all its glory, with more being added regularly.

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The Licence Plate Fence:

Remember the truck in the Speilberg film Duel, with the vehicle licence plates of the victims fixed to the front of the truck? Various places have licence plate fences and walls, not as souvenirs as victims but because the owners conduct scrap and salvage yards and because more get donated.

The one above is in Missouri

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The UXO Fences:

UXO stands for unexploded ordnance, ie unexploded bombs, mines etc. It is estimated that up to 30% of bombs dropped on Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam during the Vietnam War failed to explode, either through defects or from being dropped too low. The UXO causes fatalities and injuries, as well as making land unsafe to farm. There are ongoing removal and disarmament programs. Once retrieved and disarmed, such ordnance has been utilised in construction of fences and gates, as seen in these photographs from Laos: