Off-Beat-News
Paris 'love locks' auctioned for charity─── 11:13 Sun, 14 May 2017
Paris - A charity auction selling off "love locks" from Paris bridges to raise money for refugees yesterday brought in over $270,000, or more than R3.6 million, though the event was briefly interrupted by protests from far-right nationalists.
AFP reports that for years tourists inscribed their initials on padlocks and hooked them to the railings of bridges, most famously the Pont des Arts near the Louvre, throwing the key into the River Seine to express their undying devotion.
But officials cracked down on the practice and started removing the locks in 2015 after one section of the Pont des Arts collapsed under the weight of thousands of locks.
Hundreds of people took part in the auction at Credit Municipal de Paris in which 150 bunches of the locks - mounted on displays of wood or recycled paving stones, or hanging from acrylic stands - went under the hammer.
A dozen young members of a French far-right youth group briefly interrupted the event in protest, chanting "Money to Parisians, not to illegals".
AFP
