#5 Over (and under) the Bridge
This was my second full day, and I had planned to bike it across the Golden Gate Bridge, however it seemed most of the bike hire places with half-decent bikes were either closed for the holidays or out of bikes, so I decided to get a cab over the bridge, and walk it back. I got an Uber to take me from the front of the hotel and it dropped me off 15 minutes later at the ‘Golden Gate Bridge View Vista Point’. It’s essentially a service area off the main drag for passing cars to pull in and admire the views, so it was heaving with people.
Under the bridge.
I wanted to get a better view, so with the help of Google maps identified a service road which seemed to snake under the bridge and down to the shore from the opposite side of the road, so off I went. I thought I was walking into a private area as parts of the space under the bridge were reserved for storage of all the maintenance paraphernalia for the bridge, but I was reassured by the sight of a few cyclists struggling to get back up the hill. I got some nice shots of the underside of the bridge, which I imagine most people don’t bother to look at, but the scale and order of the ironwork is beautiful, and a tribute to the engineers who designed and built it.
As the road levelled out I reached a little marina. There were hardly any people down here, and the views of the bridge from the sea level were awesome. I took loads of photos down here, including the one at the top of thie page, and plenty more from the bridge deck as I walked back. Looking back on the pictures they really don’t convey the size of the bridge, it really is massive. I huffed and puffed my way back up the hill to rejoin the bridge deck.
I think I had underestimated the length too. It’s over 1.2 miles from end to end, so a good 15-20 minute walk. From the deck, the sea is 220 feet below you, and the massive towers stand at 750 feet tall. I don’t normally have a problem with heights, but I couldn’t help feel a bit queezy when I stopped to look up at the towers. It was also disconcerting to see a 2 inch gap in the footway where it joins the road deck. The rational part of me knew the chance of me slipping through said gap was minimal, but I was suprisingly happy to get back to the other side. I managed to get some more nice shots from the bridge, looking over to the city and towards Alcatraz. All being well, I was planning to look back to the bridge from Alcatraz the following day.
There are sad reminders, in the form of placards advertising support and counselling services, that this is the world’s most popular location for suicides, they average more than 1 every fortnight here. I can recommend the 2006 documentary film The Bridge, in which the crew filmed night and day for a whole year, and documented some of the stories of the people who took their own life, those who were talked down, and those that survived. The height of the bridge means the troubled souls who make the jump are 95% certain to die from the impact, and if they don’t, the cold water and strong currents will do their worst. The same distance affords 4 seconds of thinking time, during which several survivors have reported they immediately regretted their actions. Ken Baldwin, who survived the fall with some nasty injuries in 1985, wrote
I instantly realised that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable – except for having just jumped.
The bridge is now undergoing a $215 million plan to add a steel net to catch would-be jumpers. Looking at the plans for the work, I can’t help but think it’s a pointless endeavour. If someone has made the decision to jump, and they land in a net 10 feet down, won’t they just jump off the net? Maybe it will act as a deterrent, maybe $215 million could have a bigger impact on casualties if carefully spent on mental health services for vulnerable people. I don’t envy the jobs of clinical commisioners.
Wave Organ, looking to Alcatraz.
Anyway back to happier times…At the south end of the bridge is a visitor centre with a couple of exhibits and a gift shop, and there’s a nice walk back into the city on the coast, across Crissy Field. Rather than being a 1950’s Hollywood actress, this is a stretch of reclaimed marshland and a former miltary base now repurposed for the benefit of tourists and local joggers. I was now in the fashionable Marina disctrict, judging by the cars, boats, designer dogs and sunglasses, this was the well-heeled part of town. At the end of the jetty near the yacht club is an arty / science installation called the Wave Organ. Essentially a network of pipes and valves, secreted in the rocks and partially submerged, which produces and amplifies gargling noises as the water rolls in and out. It was really peaceful to sit there, slightly removed from the city with just the noises of the ocean being funneled around me. The sound was enough to immediately transport me to St Ives, and a particular spot where a busied mind can sit among the rock pools with feet playing cat and mouse with the lapping water whilst all thoughts take their leave for a brief but restorative moment.
I headed back inland, first for a walk around the Palace of Fine Arts, a modern (by European standards) construction designed to evoke Roman ruins, constructed for the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition. It’s very pretty, but packed with sightseekers. Like a bowl of prunes, I passed briskly though, stopping to grab photos of memorable filming locations. These mock ruins have served as the backdrop for the closing scenes of The Rock and many other films including Vertigo, which features many other SF locations, and more recently, Game of Thrones.
Mmm, a fountain this is.
Just behind the Palace of Fine Arts is the Presidio, an area of park land and another former military base, now home to some businesses and restaurants. I headed up there to grab some lunch, and then took a walk through the buidlings to try and find a cab. This being a Saturday in the holiday period, it was pretty much deserted. I walked around a couple of unmarked modern buildings which gave no clue as to their purpose. The fountain outside reception featured none other than wise old Yoda which provided a big clue, and peering through the glass I could see a C-3PO, and various other recognisable artefacts confirming this was the home of Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Magic, George Lucas’s film factory and the special effects group responsible for so many of my favourite fims, (now owned by Disney, who acquired it from Lucas for over $4 billion, and over half of that in cash.
I got an Uber to collect me from the Presidio and take me home, and it turned out the driver was an Essex boy, a nice guy called Rishi who seemed to have done every job going, and was driving his Uber to pass the time before putting his MBA back into good use. I chilled out back at the hotel for a while before deciding to take a nightime walk through the Tenderloin, against the advice of all the guide books and taxi drivers. More of that to follow.
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