Spoiler Alert: Carl will be our Guest Speaker at our SFTGG General Meeting on December 8th.
By Carl Nolte, Columnist Aug 23, 2025 - San Francisco Chronicle
There are milestones in life, small rituals to mark the passing of the years — opening
day of the Giants season, first night at the opera, a special day at a favorite vacation spot, something to look forward to. Same time, next year.
As you might imagine, I have my own. I walk across the Golden Gate Bridge on the third week of August just as summer is fading away. It’s a good time — there are anniversaries and birthdays to celebrate, and there’s usually pleasant weather. All the best people were born in August. I’m sure you know some of them. Aug. 22 was the day the yacht America won the world’s most celebrated sail race. So that’s a good symbol.
The magnificent bridge over the Golden Gate Strait is itself a symbol, connecting San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean, the city to the brown hills and cliffs of Marin. Even the name is magic. The Spanish called the strait Boca del Puerto de San Francisco — the entrance to the port of San Francisco. But when the Americans came in 1846, everything changed. U.S. Army Capt. John Charles Fremont renamed it. “To this gate I gave the name ‘Chrysophylae’ or ‘Golden Gate’ for the same reasons that the harbor of Byzantium was called Chrysoceras or Golden Horn.” In antiquity, the Golden Horn linked Asia and Europe; centuries later, the Golden Gate linked America and Asia.
The strait was there for 10,000 years, a mile wide, a gateway and a barrier. But in 1933, 92 years ago, work began on a new bridge. It opened just over four years later, May 27, 1937.
The bridge speaks for itself: There’s nothing like it. Still, Bay Area people take the Golden Gate Bridge for granted. “We grew up here, and we live here,” said historian Kevin Starr, the California state librarian. “It’s like growing up in the shadow of the Parthenon in Athens. You cross that bridge a thousand times in your life.” The bridge, he said, “is one of the great works of art.”
Golden Gate magic: Walk across one of the world’s wonders
Greg
Quick and Dirty
There are milestones in life, small rituals to mark the passing of the years — opening day of the Giants season, first night at the opera, a special day at a favorite vacation spot, something to look forward to. Same time, next year.
As you might imagine, I have my own. I walk across the Golden Gate Bridge on the third week of August just as summer is fading away. It’s a good time — there are anniversaries and birthdays to celebrate, and there’s usually pleasant weather. All the best people were born in August. I’m sure you know some of them. Aug. 22 was the day the yacht America won the world’s most celebrated sail race. So that’s a good symbol.
The magnificent bridge over the Golden Gate Strait is itself a symbol, connecting San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean, the city to the brown hills and cliffs of Marin. Even the name is magic. The Spanish called the strait Boca del Puerto de San Francisco — the entrance to the port of San Francisco. But when the Americans came in 1846, everything changed. U.S. Army Capt. John Charles Fremont renamed it. “To this gate I gave the name ‘Chrysophylae’ or ‘Golden Gate’ for the same reasons that the harbor of Byzantium was called Chrysoceras or Golden Horn.” In antiquity, the Golden Horn linked Asia and Europe; centuries later, the Golden Gate linked America and Asia.
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The strait was there for 10,000 years, a mile wide, a gateway and a barrier. But in 1933, 92 years ago, work began on a new bridge. It opened just over four years later, May 27, 1937.
The bridge speaks for itself: There’s nothing like it. Still, Bay Area people take the Golden Gate Bridge for granted. “We grew up here, and we live here,” said historian Kevin Starr, the California state librarian. “It’s like growing up in the shadow of the Parthenon in Athens. You cross that bridge a thousand times in your life.” The bridge, he said, “is one of the great works of art.”
He’s right. Driving though the Presidio on another errand in the past week, I came around the corner near the Tunnel Tops picnic area and there was the bridge framed by cypress trees. We’re lucky, I thought, to be able to see things like that on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon.
The Golden Gate Bridge on Friday, Aug. 22, 2025.
Carl Nolte/SF Chronicle
We are luckier still to be able to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge, to see firsthand what it is like, to feel it move, to look down at the tide rips and whirls in the water, to put your hand on one of the suspender ropes that reach down from the main cables and feel the vibrations. The bridge is alive.
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I always start on the San Francisco side, near the statue of Joseph Strauss, the chief engineer, who took credit for the design. The bridge comes with a history, too: of dreamers, political intrigue and infighting that goes on to this day. There are those who say the bridge should never have been built: the Sierra Club opposed its construction on environmental grounds. Some old San Franciscans hated the bridge. It ruined the look of the Golden Gate. They cited the noted moody picture of the Golden Gate without the bridge.
Others say the bridge was built on false promises. You can still find people who say the bridge politicians promised the bridge would be free once the construction bonds were paid off. Instead, the board of directors have spun off into the ferry and bus business and other boondoggles. Now, the toll for a car is $10. It’s an outrage! It’s also an urban legend. If there was a free bridge promise, it was never in writing.
But you see the real stuff by walking: daredevil bicyclists who zip by as if they were in a race; rookie riders on rental bikes who wobble over the narrow walkway; fast walkers, slow walkers, tourists, some amazed, some disappointed. “I thought the damn thing would be gold,’’ I overheard one tourist say.
There are characters, including people who walk the Golden Gate every day. One was the late Walt Stack, who ran from the South End Rowing Club to Sausalito and back every day, 17 miles. He ran without a shirt, summer and winter, and trained on hot dogs and beer. He ran well into his 80s. I only encountered him in person on the bridge once. He stopped for just a bit. A brief encounter: “What do you in Sausalito?” I asked him. “I take a dump and think of Ronald Reagan,” he said. And he was off: “Gotta run.”
We don’t have characters like that anymore, so I was lucky to see Walt Stack. But there can be other lucky encounters. Sometimes, if you time it correctly, you can spot a ship coming in from the sea, or one heading out, and work your way along the sidewalk to be there exactly when the ship passes under. A big ship at your feet, like being in a low flying airplane.
If you’re really lucky you might catch a cruise ship, loaded down with passengers toasting the Golden Gate with sailaway drinks, all looking up at people lining the bridge railing. It’s like one of those bon voyage scenes in old movies: “See you later Charlie! Have a wonderful time!”
I always like the middle of the bridge, the center of it all. That’s where the foghorns are. On a foggy day they give the Golden Gate its deep and distinctive voice.
A walk across the bridge will give you a chance to see the suicide barrier and its approaches. It’s like a fence stretching out six feet. Before the barrier people would vault over the rail into eternity. Hundreds did it, usually on the east side facing San Francisco. The Golden Gate had a fatal pull, the dark side of the dream.
You can’t see the barrier when driving, but up close, it’s there. That’s another good reason to walk on the bridge at least once a year. It makes you think.
I think sometimes of not just sailing out the Golden Gate Strait on some adventure, but sailing back in. I remember one day talking to Dick Fontaine, a friend, about things that were important to us as we stood on Mount Tamalpais and looked out over the hills. One of those late afternoon talks that sometimes happen.
Cars drive over the Golden Gate Bridge as it sits in a smoky haze as seen from Battery Godfrey in San Francisco in September 2023.
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
I must have mentioned something about the Golden Gate Bridge. We could see the top of one of the towers just above the fog.
“It was a day like this,” he said, “I remember it very well, even though it was a long time ago, because it was the first time I rode a ship under the Golden Gate. I was in the Army, on a troopship. I think it was the General Pope, the general somebody or other. We were coming back from the Korean War. A lousy trip, the ship rolled and everybody was seasick.’’
It was just at twilight when the ship passed under the Golden Gate Bridge, and all the soldiers began to cheer from the bow of the ship to the stern. Then they threw their hats over the side into the water and they went floating back in the wake of the ship. A strait full of hats.
“When that ship went under the bridge, the long, lousy trip was over, Korea was over, the Army was over, all that stuff was over. We were home,” Fontaine said.
So when I do my once a year walk over the Golden Gate, I think of that story. I might be a bit slower this year, so I’m taking Walt Stack’s advice on running: “Start slow and taper off.”
See you next year.
Aug 23, 2025
Carl Nolte