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.”

Several weeks earlier, a Facebook page for the event had been created. Messages of support were sent and forwarded. As the day drew near, a change in tone set in; the group’s e-mails went from the manic proposition of an outdoor lock-picking party in the late-summer sun in one of the world’s greatest cities to a slightly stunned, what-have-we-done level of carefully considered legal specificity. The group’s lawyer was cc’d. Interested participants were urged to “be polite”—even to stay at home, if they had open warrants. They were advised to arrive sober, to be well behaved, and to pick locks, not fights: no arguments with cops or curious bystanders.

The group was not, in fact, easy to find. Despite the announced 4 P.M. kick-off, it was nearly 4:30 before it became clear that anyone had even shown up. Unsurprisingly, for an introverted tribe of technical specialists, the lock pickers had dispersed along the Bridge, their backs turned away from the other walkers, steadily cropping locks and moving, foot by foot, toward Brooklyn.

I introduced myself to the group’s ostensible conductor for the day, a well-known lock picker and the author of several books on hacking and security who calls himself Deviant Ollam. He had driven up from Philadelphia that morning with his partner, who goes by the nickname Lady Merlin. Dev is on the Board of Directors of the Open Organization Of Lockpickers, or TOOOL. He was dressed in a black polo shirt, a TOOOL logo prominently displayed on his chest, dozens of laser-printed love picking leaflets slipped neatly into the pockets of his cargo shorts. Wrapped around one wrist was a magnetic bracelet to which he could attach his picks, swapping out one tool for another in seconds.

Love picking is by no means universally sanctioned among the lock picking crowd. A vigorous and less than polite discussion had been developing on Reddit for the past month. As it turns out, the event was first been proposed as an anti-graffiti gesture by a Redditor called Bobcat. Bobcat is an anti-gun-control, get-off-my-lawn type who has been roused to anger by what he considers a blatant misuse of the Brooklyn Bridge. Love locks accelerate rust, he railed. They’re ugly. Bobcat is not a romantic. Only later was he able to secure the support and interest of Deviant Ollam and TOOOL—but, even then, it wasn’t easy. After all, for an anarchic group of fringe hobbyists keenly aware that most people consider what they do illegal, picking love locks on a highly visible city landmark could only make things worse. Everyone already thinks we’re criminals, they complained; now, everyone will think we’re assholes.

Of course, some New Yorkers did stop to watch, and a few even interrupted to ask exactly why a small group of people had suddenly appeared picking locks on a Saturday afternoon. It was a gorgeous day; love was in the air. A couple walked by and had their photograph taken for a wedding album; families strolled slowly down the middle of the bike lane, snapping photos of each other on iPads. It was romantic and autumnal, with a slight chance of sunburn. Who were these mysterious people, mostly wearing baseball hats and clad in black, hunched alone in the corners and stealing love locks?

A woman from Sweden seemed most concerned. “Can you tell me why you are picking the locks?” she asked. Dev, when pressed, proved himself a magnificent showman. His magnetic bracelet now on the other arm for comfort, he turned away from the lock at hand and pontificated on the predatory nature of New York’s Department of Transportation, which would, soon enough, clip all of these locks and discard them. Dev emphasized the need to preserve these affectionate souvenirs, precisely by picking and removing them. They were doing this for the good of the locks. The woman from Sweden wasn’t convinced. She and her partner had come out to the Bridge that day specifically to clip their own love lock there, she explained. Now, they looked despondent. “Can you tell me where in New York it is safe to put my lock?” The lack of an answer hung heavily in the air as they walked away.

Schuyler Towne, one of the earliest evangelists of locksport in the United States, got in touch with me after he saw photos of the event on Twitter. He seemed exasperated. There are two primary rules in locksport, he emphasized. One is never pick a lock that isn’t yours. The other is never pick a lock that’s currently in use. Seemingly embarrassed by his own belief in the poetry of it all, Towne insisted that the love locks are being used, though admittedly not in the traditional sense. Worse, he added, TOOOL had incorrectly informed its members of New York State law only; the ordinances of New York City, on the other hand, say that it is specifically illegal for anyone other than a locksmith to open a lock with picks. As such, he added, each participant had unknowingly been “marching out onto that bridge to commit a crime, and for no particularly good reason.”

By the end of the day, the group had removed nearly eighteen pounds of padlocks from the Bridge, lightening its infrastructural load by approximately the weight of an infant, and reducing, as Bobcat stressed on Reddit, the future threat of rust and patination. For now, the locks will remain in the red nylon bags, awaiting, for who knows how long, the promised sculptural tree that might someday hold them.

A week later, shiny new padlocks had already appeared on the Bridge, steel buds undaunted by the bolt cutters and lock picks of others.

Photograph by Nicola Twilley