Locks an expression of love on bridge
A nuisance in Paris, but in Houston they’re just a sweet touch
Sami Failing was looking for a romantic spot to serve as the backdrop for her engagement photos when she struck gold: a love lock fence.
Just above Allen Parkway, on a pedestrian bridge with unobstructed views of downtown’s skyline, a growing number of padlocks loop around the chain links, sealed for all eternity in a symbol of everlasting love.
Failing and her then-fiancé, nowhusband John, were blown away when they found this hidden bit of romance.
“We were walking to the Sabine Street Bridge, and we wanted to see what the skyline looked like from the chain-link fence, so we climbed up,” she remembers. “And when we saw it, we were like, ‘Oh, my goodness.’ We’d heard about the one in Paris.”
Ah, yes, “the one in Paris.” Millions of people have heard about the Pont des Arts bridge over the Seine, which
grew so heavy under the weight of 700,000 locks that its panels had to be removed in 2015. But most Americans are unaware that this is not where the trend began. For that, we head to Serbia. Local legend holds that when two lovers were separated during World War I, the left-behind lover attached a lock to a bridge in the small town of Vrnjačka Banja. The tale was immortalized decades later
in a famous poem by Desanka Maksimović.
But while it became the stuff of local legends, it wasn’t until much later that love locks took the world by storm. In 2006, Italian writer Federico Moccia penned the novel “Ho Voglia di Te” (I Want You), which is regarded as an Italian “Twilight,” meant to stir the romantic senses of teens. In the book, a young couple
loops a padlock around the cables of Rome’s Milvian Bridge to signify unbreakable love. And as with “Twilight,” which came out in America at roughly the same time, teens couldn’t stop at simply reading. Soon, fixing locks on the Roman bridge was as common a sighting as tourists tossing coins in Trevi Fountain. By 2008, the trend had popped up in Paris.
And Florence. And Moscow. Then Kansas City. And Pittsburgh. And San Antonio. And, apparently, Houston.
“We’d seen one in San Antonio, and we’d even mentioned to each other, ‘Wow. Houston needs to do something like that,’ ” Failing says.
When they discovered the pedestrian bridge, just west of Sabine, the Failings were beyond thrilled to learn the city had quietly beat them to the punch. They called their wedding photographer and made plans to begin their engagement shoot there.
“It was the first scene we shot,” says Failing.
While the superstition compels young lovers to toss their padlock key over the edge of a bridge, into the
water, this move poses some issues here in Houston, where the go-to lovelock bridge runs over bustling Allen Parkway. The Failings kept their key. They’d originally planned to have their padlock engraved, but in a time crunch, they inked their initials and the date of their wedding on the metal lock with a Sharpie.
“We actually still have the key to go get it, so we can have it engraved,” says Failing. “We’re going to put a twist tie in its place while it’s gone, so we know where to put it back.”
They shouldn’t have any problem with this. While municipalities across the globe have cracked down on love locks — Florence outlawed the practice, and Paris covered Pont des Arts with plexiglass to deter would-be lockers — Houston officials think it’s kind of sweet.
“It’s certainly not an issue from a maintenance standpoint,” says Mike Isermann, deputy director of facility management and development for the city’s parks department. In Paris, bridge panels were crumbling under the weight of what amounted to 20 elephants stressing the structure. But here in Houston, that’s just not happening.
“The structural integrity of the bridges we have are pretty stout, and it would take a considerable amount of locks to be a problem — and we’re not anywhere close,” he says.
While locking has been around in Houston for several years, according to the dates scrawled on some of the locks, it has yet to hit critical mass. On the pedestrian bridge over Allen Parkway, there are only a few hundred locks; on other bridges, such as the Rosemont Pedestrian Bridge in Buffalo Bayou
Park, the smattering is even sparser. Other miniconstellations of locks have popped up across the city, too.
Pittsburgh shares a similar story. A bridge that spans the divide between the city’s major universities is bursting with locks. So, after about a decade, officials there decided to make that the city’s official love-lock location.
“We’ve allowed that one bridge to accumulate love locks,” says Mike Gable, director of public works for Pittsburgh. “But last year, they started to show up on another bridge. And basically because there were so few locks on that bridge, I’ve instructed the staff to take them off.”
It’s an endearing tradition, Gable says. But he doesn’t want to see every gorgeous view in the city obstructed by $3 padlocks.
“It’s colorful, but it starts to look a little trashy,” he says.
Here in Houston, trashy isn’t the word used to describe the pedestrian bridge, where a hole in the chain links opens up for an intimate peek at some of the city’s prettiest highrises. It’s romantic — a reason for couples like the Failings to drive from their home in Rosenberg and stage some of the most memorable photos of their lives.
“I think this is another unique way that people express themselves at a park. And it beats graffiti,” says Isermann. “We’ll keep an eye on it and monitor it. But honestly, you don’t want to take away something that’s special to people like that.”