As Valentine’s Day approaches, the most romantic place in Oak Park is arguably the last place you’d expect to find romance — under the viaduct on Oak Park Avenue. There you’ll find dozens of padlocks fixed to fencing on the east side of the underpass, and even a half-dozen or so on the west side (evidently the non-conformists).
And they’re spreading — a number can now be found under the viaduct on Marion Street in Downtown Oak Park.
You can thank that great romantic, Ernest Hemingway. Well, the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, anyway. Executive Director Allison Sansone, who had visited Paris with her husband (certainly romantic) the previous November, saw the padlocks festooning a bridge over the Seine River and thought it might make a nice tie-in with the annual Hemingway birthday, which the foundation celebrates each July 21. This year’s theme highlighted Ernie’s connection to Paris.
“We were looking for a participatory event,” Sansone said.
When she got home, Sansone called Camille Wilson-White, executive director of the village-sponsored Oak Park Area Arts Council, who was happy to serve as a liaison with village government and the Public Arts Advisory Committee (chaired by David Sokol) which needed to approve the idea because it involved the village’s participation (not very romantic, of course, but necessary).
As it happens, the village had already installed heavy grates (along with lighting) to dress up the gloomy underpass, and the intent was to use them to hang works of art. In fact, there are nice photo enlargements of Oak Park tourist sites adorning to the grates under the Marion Street viaduct.
Rather than lock the love locks to the grates, however, Public Works Director John Wielebnicki suggested chain link fencing that could be easily removed whenever the love locks had run their course — originally scheduled for summer’s end, Sept. 21.
But the fencing didn’t come down and the love locks remain, testaments to the permanence of “everlasting love,” as Master Lock puts it on their website, masterlovelock.com, which claims the company has sent out 10,370 love locks thus far.
“It’s a website that promotes the international custom of sweethearts locking a padlock to a bridge, symbolizing their everlasting love,” says Sandy Bosetti, marketing services and brand manager for Master Lock in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. “You can virtually lock up your affection or memorialize loved ones on an iconic bridge.” Master Lock donated 250 locks to the Hemingway program, she said, “the first time we donated locks for this type of event,” meaning, presumably, under as opposed to over a “bridge.”
The locks are still available, by the way, for $5 and the Hemingway Foundation and OPAAC are splitting the proceeds. You can buy your lock at the Hemingway Museum, 200 N. Oak Park Ave., in case you’ve never been there. Nice place to visit regardless.
Or you can put up your own lock and many romantics have. All manner of strange shapes, many with messages scribbled on with magic marker. One large, heart-shaped lock looks handmade. The couple spray-painted it red — onsite, unfortunately, so there is also red paint on the permanent green grate behind it. Oh well, romantics will be romantic.
One couple put up a pair of handcuffs, Sansone noted, so the full range of romanticism is represented. But most were content to simply leave their names (or initials), dates and doodles. A few left scrawled messages, which survive because the underpass is sheltered from the snow and rain.
But the participatory dimension isn’t limited to locks. Many of the couples left “really sweet pictures,” said Sansone, on Instagram, tagged #ehfop (standing for Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park) or #oplovelocks. “The messages are adorable,” she said. “It’s nice to get everyone’s love story.”
Master Lock, meanwhile, also invites you to “see more” at: http://www.masterlovelock.com/#sthash.GEMU1S7B.dpuf.
In the originally bridge tradition, which has spread to other cities worldwide (actually, we’re not sure where it started), couples lock the locks and toss the keys into the river below, kind of like coins in a fountain. Some, of course, use combination locks to avoid the disposable key, but the Hemingway Foundation installed a dropbox for those who don’t want to litter the ground with keys, and a sign explains the point of the whole exercise for perplexed pedestrians who might be alarmed by the sight of dozens of padlocks beneath a viaduct.
Wilson-White, however, thinks the whole thing is “cool. There’s a charm to it. I haven’t heard anything about the village taking it down. I’m going to say, ‘Let it be.'”
Sansone agrees. “As long as the village is comfortable with it, we’re not in a rush to tear it down.”
So we have an unobtrusive installation dressing up an otherwise boring underpass that involved village government cooperation, that didn’t get bogged down by bureaucracy, and no one’s worrying about a deadline.
Isn’t that romantic?