Lock Picking As Sport - And Street Art?

According to The New Yorker, there is a lock picking contest going on in New York City that is resulting in some amazing "installations" of lock on public infrastructure. Almost like a street art sculpture effort.

The full article is here.

Here is the gist:

Over the past decade, “locksport”—the organized recreational picking of locks by amateur enthusiasts—has become a thriving subculture. Participants are, by definition, not professional locksmiths. This puts what they do in a legal gray area that they are quick to discuss and defend. In addition to nimble fingers and long attention spans, locksport enthusiasts try to remain fluent in local burglary law.

All but simultaneously, the phenomenon of “love locks” has exploded: padlocks with names, initials, or messages of love written on them, clipped to pieces of urban infrastructure as a public sign of romantic commitment. In some cases, the locks have been expensively laser-etched; others are simply written on with Sharpie. “Carrina, will you marry me?” “Zach + Julie, Always + Forever.” They are poetic, forming quite beautiful, rose-like clusters—and they are doomed. In nearly all cases, they will be clipped by the city and disposed of, their magic and romance lost.

On a nearly cloudless Saturday afternoon in September, recreational lock pickers met halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge to help save its hundreds of love locks. The plan was to remove as many as possible before the city’s cleaning crews could clip them, store them in red, Valentine’s Day-colored nylon bags, and, eventually, reattach each lock onto a public-art sculpture, a specially made “tree” to which all future love locks will be latched. They call this “love picking.”