Bridging the Golden Gate

By Heidi Noroozy

It’s impossible to imagine San Francisco without the Golden Gate Bridge. The city’s most famous icon is a thing of beauty, soaring effortlessly out of the ever-present California mist. Not only does the structure’s graceful design catch the eye, but the rocky landscape all around it offers unforgettable views. The bridge spans nearly a mile of ocean at the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, from Fort Point in the south to the Marin Headlands in the north. And like so many places in San Francisco, it has a fascinating history.

Built between 1933 and 1937, during the Great Depression, the Golden Gate Bridge celebrated its 75^th birthday this year. Yet the idea for its construction was first raised 65 years earlier, in 1869, when Joshua Abraham Norton proposed building a bridge across the straight. Norton had earned a fortune in the Gold Rush and lost it all through unfortunate investments in the rice market. He dealt with his loss badly and later went insane, so perhaps his contemporaries had good reason to dismiss his proposal. But for decades, engineers thought the prospect of building a bridge across the straight to be an impossible feat—the distance was too long, the winds too strong, the ocean too choppy.

A team of architects developed the concept that overcame these obstacles. The project’s chief architect, Joseph Strauss, came up with a basic design then hired two architects, Irving and Gertrude Morrow, to “make it beautiful.” In the end, the team designed a suspension bridge that was not only aesthetically pleasing but also had the tallest towers, thickest and longest cables, and biggest foundation piers at the time.

The construction project also set unprecedented safety standards. Strauss insisted that workers wear protective headgear and glare-free goggles, not at all common practice at the time. A safety net that stretched from one end of the bridge to the other saved the lives of 19 men, who became known as the Halfway-To-Hell Club. Until just a few months before the bridge was completed, only one man died on the job. But on February 17, 1937, ten men fell to their deaths when their scaffolding collapsed and ripped the safety net.

One of the biggest misconceptions about the bridge is how it got its name. When I take out-of-town guests to see the bridge, someone inevitably exclaims, “But it’s not golden at all!” In fact, the structure is painted a color called “international orange,” a rusty reddish tint, chosen because it complements the natural surroundings and is easily seen in the fog—a boon to incoming ships. The bridge is named after the Golden Gate Strait that it spans, which, incidentally, got its own moniker in 1846 when the explorer, Captain John Fremont, found that the surrounding landscape reminded him of Istanbul’s Golden Horn.

The Golden Gate Bridge also has a dark side: It is the world’s most popular spot for suicides. Since 1937, an estimated 1,600 people have jumped to their deaths from the bridge. The reasons for this sinister statistic are varied, everything from the bridge’s iconic status to the fact that death by falling 200 feet into a churning sea is a pretty sure thing—the survival rate is a mere 2 percent. But probably the main reason is the bridge’s easy accessibility. The railing along the pedestrian walkway is only 4 feet high, low enough for anyone to climb over. To combat the high suicide rate, the bridge has a hotline with telephones that connect the caller to a crisis center. And there are plans to place a net under the bridge, similar to the one that saved the lives of the Halfway-To-Hell Club, but made of stainless steel.

This darker history, tragic as it is, doesn’t detract much from the structure’s fascination. I live barely an hour from the Golden Gate and have long lost count of the times I’ve visited the bridge. And yet I can still sit for hours watching its ever changing moods. One day it rises out of the mist, another time its Art Deco towers disappear into the clouds. And on a rare sunny day, the orange-tinted span even seems to sparkle with a hint of gold.

Off The Beaten Track: Hammett, Bogart, and Me

Our contributor this week is Dave Sinclair. He writes detective noir set in 1920s Melbourne, Australia, and has an uncanny knack for trivia about Hollywood movies from the '30s and '40s. He also has his own blog that he sometimes remembers to post on - http://www.idiotsview.blogspot.com/

As I sat there eating my superb medium rare steak I couldn’t help smiling like a loon. History positively seeped from the mahogany walls. I tried to tell myself this was just any old restaurant. That this was just a room. But it wasn’t. This place had history. This place had cred. I knew that in this small San Francisco bistro Dashiell Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon. I could be sitting at the very table Bogart lit a cigarette and cracked wise. This was no ordinary place to strap on a feed bag.

John’s Grill on Ellis Street, downtown San Francisco, certainly looks the part. The dimly lit interior with its dark wooden walls hasn't changed since Hammett sat at the bar waiting for his "chops, baked potato and sliced tomato". Well, I’m taking a stab that’s what he ate, as it’s aptly described as Sam Spade's grub of choice in The Maltese Falcon.

Hammett, like John’s Grill, may not have been the first to do what he did, but damn, he was certainly one of the best.

It’s generally agreed that Edgar Allen Poe was the grandfather of detective fiction who wrote The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841 (here). Australia, and Melbourne in particular, played a part in spreading the detective novel’s appeal – in 1898 Francis Hume wrote The Mystery Of The Hansom Cab, wholly set in Melbourne. It was hugely popular in its day, selling 375,000 copies in its first year of release.

But it was Hammett that dragged the genre kicking and screaming out of the mire of pulps and penny dreadfuls. Like Chandler, Hammett created realistic detective and stories. His lean writing style, cynical characters and complex plots brought a new energy to the stagnant detective novel and in the process, created a new beast – Hard Boiled Fiction. His tough heroes confront violence with full knowledge of its corrupting potential. In his novels Hammett painted a mean picture of American society, where greed, brutality, and treachery are the major driving forces behind human actions. His plots rocketed along often taking new, and brutal, turns. He set the bar, and it is debatable if it has ever been reached since.

It is little wonder then that Hammett chose John’s Grill as his hang out of choice. Despite the fact that today the restaurant is replete in crisp white table cloths, excellent service and sumptuous gourmet food, you can still feel that in its darker corners the place has a much seedier history. Character is a word that springs to mind, though without the trappings of a high class eatery, menace is probably more apt.

Ironically, it now houses a real life mystery – about the low down rat bastard that stole the Maltese Falcon statue used in the film, as well as various Hammett first editions (here).

John's Grill is a place of mystery, gourmet food, literary history and jazz on a foggy night. The echoes of the characters created between the walls still resonate – Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man) and Continental Op (The Red Harvest and The Dain Curse). So, if it’s alright with you, I’ll continue to grin like a loon.

The Novel Adventurers will be dedicating a week to books and movies with international settings very soon. Stay tuned!