Lovers' lane

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Lovers' lane is a generic term for secluded areas where people kiss or make out. These areas range from parking lots in secluded rural areas to places with extraordinary views of a cityscape or other feature.

"Lovers' lanes" are typically found in cultures built around the automobile—lovers often make out in a car or van for privacy.

Lovers' lanes have existed for centuries, sometimes as places for secret meetings with a loved one or as a euphemism for red-light districts and other areas of prostitution.

Examples

Road sign for Love Lane in Marldon, Devon, United Kingdom.

There are several streets called Lovers Lane, including those at Boonville, New York; Greenfield, Massachusetts; Southborough, Massachusetts; Riverton, Utah; Portage, Michigan; Excelsior Springs, Missouri; Springfield, Missouri; Charlestown, New Hampshire; Princeton, New Jersey; Slatington, Pennsylvania; Dallas, Texas; Ravenna Township, Portage County, Ohio; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Newark-on-Trent and Ludham (both in England).

• The area on the south-east side of Fullers Bridge[1], which crosses the Lane Cove River, and is located near Chatswood, New South Wales, Australia, is a well-known Lovers' Lane.

• Lovers Lane is a famous road in St. Joseph, Missouri of which a popular poem by Eugene Field was written.

• Lovers' Lane is most commonly used in the urban legend "The Hook".

The bowdlerised version Love Lane is sometimes seen.

Crime

Many criminals take advantage of people engaging in kissing or any type of sexual contact as those people are bound to carry themselves off-guard from a variety of criminals. Metropolitan Los Angeles is an infamous area for this type of crime.

In 1963 the Fuller's Bridge lovers' lane mentioned above site became notorious as the location of the bodies of CSIRO scientist Dr Gilbert Stanley Bogle and Mrs Margaret Olive Chandler, the wife of one of his colleagues. The cause of death while indicative of poisoning couldn't be definitively determined, and, apart from Mrs Chandler's husband, Geoffrey, who was considered the prime suspect by the New South Wales Police, no one to-date has been charged. The Bogle-Chandler case has baffled law enforcement and forensic experts up to present day.

See also

• Gropecunt Lane
• Lover's Leap