Brooklyn Boro

A new wave of odd Brooklyn Bridge mementos

Elastic ponytail holders festoon the famous span

November 12, 2015 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle
The Brooklyn Bridge is humming with pedestrians Wednesday. Come see what previous visitors have left behind as mementos. Eagle photos by Lore Croghan
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Remember Me Eternally — with an elastic ponytail holder tied to the Brooklyn Bridge?

There’s a fresh crop of odd mementos dangling from the world-famous bridge, in addition to the “locks of love” that have garnered so much media attention.

Hair ribbons are laced in among the collection of elastic hairbands on the metalwork surrounding the pedestrian walkway of the borough’s most beloved bridge.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow — or such would seem to be the message suggested by this beauty parlor flotsam and jetsam.

Elsewhere on the bridge, padlocks are lined up in a few neat rows, despite a long-running campaign by the city Department of Transportation to remove them.

A year ago, Brooklyn Eagle reporter Mary Frost spotted hair scrunchies among an array of odd items affixed to the bridge including grocery-store bags, shoe laces, luggage tags and ear buds. Workers have long since removed that particular crop of garbage. But the hair gear has returned with a vengeance.

Leaving locks on the Brooklyn Bridge is a tradition imported from Paris, where “love padlocks” proliferate on the Pont des Arts. But what’s the deal with the ponytail holder mementos?

It can be a gray day. It can be a weekday. The Brooklyn Bridge is a people magnet anyway. It was full of visitors Wednesday afternoon— but the Eagle couldn’t find any English-speakers who would claim the hairbands as their own, or explain the logic behind them.

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