I cannot think of a more appropriate tempest in a teapot than the tiny controversy of the love locks on the Los Gatos Main Street bridge.
Frankly, I'm wondering why we can’t find some really more significant wrongs to be righted with all of our righteous energy. I’ve seen the love locks and the fact that there is a controversy at all strikes me as absurdly ridiculous.
Since the early 1970s, I’ve been dealing with a discreet and personal disability that I don’t like to talk about but for a very long time it has kept me involved with numerous bureaucracies with specialized services and many levels and tiers and sub-strata and side compartments.
For some reason it seems that each of these “compartments” have their own set of rules, regulations, each with their own overdeveloped and little understood vernacular of three-letter acronyms and secret, ultra-important, privately held dialects.
The problem is, the ultra-importance is only important to them, the big fish in the little pond, all the little ponds, the tempests in so many tiny teacups. And the big fish, and all their supportive little fish, take all this “importance” so seriously. They will fine you or put you in jail if you don’t respect each and and every important thing that they cherish and fear in their particular pond.
How many big fish, in how many little ponds, did it take for the faceless “powers that be” to become aware of the locks on the bridge. And how many other big fish got involved enough to design, then print, then put up all of those faceless signs all along the bridge?
Oh, yeah, I wonder how many over-manned road crews it took to put up those plastic covered pieces of paper? How much did it cost the taxpayer to pay for these “important” attentions and actions? And why did they even bother with it in the first place?
Are the one or two dozen or so locks going to throw the bridge off balance and dump it down onto Highway 17? Are they going to blind the view of the picturesque freeway? Are they eventually going to rust and contaminate the cyclone fencing, which is covered in protective plastic anyway?
Why don’t these powers that be go down to some of the underpasses and overpasses in the area and get rid of some of the very obvious, ill-intentioned graffiti and leave these tiny, romantically intentioned little tokens alone?
The entire thing is simply preposterous. Why doesn’t the town manager or Los Gatos Town Council or whoever represents us, tell what ever department to leave our town locks alone? Oops, that’s just dragging in one more little pond and even more big fish.
If anyone can’t tell, bureaucratic idiocy is at the very top of my list of things I feel free to bitch about, as much as I want.
This is like smog. One car is not a problem. A couple dozen cars are not a problem. Several hundred cars are not a problem. When you have millions of cars, it becomes a problem. Do you remember the smog in the late 60's? You would come over the hill from Santa Cruz and the entire County looked like a muddy lake. A couple dozen locks are not a problem. Search 'Love Locks' on the Internet and look at what happens where this is permitted. Every available spot will become covered with locks in a few years, several deep. I estimated a million pounds of locks on that fence. It was not designed to carry nearly that weight. At some not too distant future, one of the support points will break loose, the loads will be transferred to already overloaded adjacent support points, the entire thing will come unzipped and land on the freeway. It should be stopped now. CalTrans has very good reasons for prohibiting private property on highway facilities, CalTrans is responsible for insuring the safety of those facilities. Those putting locks on the fence will not accept liability when the fence comes down.
Another thing you will find on the Internet is that places that allow locks must occasionally prune them. Eventually every available spot is taken and there is no place to put new locks, unless the old locks are removed. It really makes much better sense to place your locks somewhere at home.
Look at the letter from Emely Welch of the Los Gatos Museum. This is an opportunity for Los Gatos Art Bridge to get involved. Do you know any Los Gatos artists who could do sculpture like this? A gathering of interested parties to discuss and develop proposals seems to be in order.
I am not aware that it was a member of Los Gatos Town staff who reported the locks. The bridge is not within their jurisdiction. I would expect that it would have been a CalTrans staffer or California Highway Patrol officer who made the call. It is their responsibility to maintain the safety of the State highways. And, yes it is a public safety issue, as I have shown elsewhere. It is unfortunate that they must expend resources placing and replacing signs and cutting down locks. The locks WILL be cut down and that will destroy them.
http://losgatos.patch.com/articles/letter-to-the-editor-museums-of-los-gatos-wants-your-locks-of-love
I estimated the fence to be about 7 1/2' high. I paced it to 69 1/2 paces at 16 paces to 50'. That puts the length at about 217.19'. The screen is 1" pitch. That means there are the equivalent of 90 horizontal runs of 2,606 links and 2,606 vertical runs of 90 links, or 469,125 links. I estimate each link could hold four locks for a total of 1,876,500 locks. Internet listings show locks weighing from 3.2 ounces to 10.4 ounces. The average was about 4 ounces, 1/4 pound. (A scientific study would remove and weigh samples of locks from existing facilities, but I could not get grant funding for a world tour of Love Lock sites.) Love Locks need room for inscriptions so they might be larger than average, but this puts us at 469,125 pounds for one layer of locks. Perusal of Internet photos worldwide shows that locks are often applied in pairs and chains. When the last available clip point has been taken, people start clipping locks to other locks. That estimated 469,125 pounds per fence could easily double or quadruple to 938,250 to 1,876,500 pounds. I'd say a million pounds is a good enough preliminary estimate for purposes of discussion.
There is another place for them. I was the first to suggest that idea. The Los Gatos Art Museum has installed two fence like structures for Love Locks. See my pictures on the Los Gatos Patch post on that event.