San Francisco’s Cable Cars

while now the San Francisco Cable Cars are primarily a tourist activity (carrying some 7 million people annually) , they grew from a need for a better method for hauling vehicles and people over the city’s famously steep hills. prior to development of the current wire-rope system, horses hauled cable cars around the city, enduring extreme hardship on the often-slick cobblestones. one story contends that the man who initiated the system, Andrew Smith Hallidie, witnessed a terrible accident between cable cars and a vehicle that resulted in the death of all five work horses. (another version has him taking over the Clay Street Hill Railroad when the initial promoter couldn’t raise the necessary capital to get the project off the ground.)

Hallidie immigrated to the United States with his father during the gold rush. while his father returned to the UK after several unsuccessful years prospecting, Hallidie remained, finding success in mining, engineering, and bridge building in the 1850s. in 1856, returned to San Francisco to start a wire rope manufacture, using principals his father previously held a patent on.

the first test of Hallidie’s Clay Street Hill cable car occurred on August 2, 1873, and it went into public operation on September 1 of the same year. for four years, Clay Street was the sole cable car company operating in San Francisco. in 1877, the previously horse-drawn Sutter Street Railroad converted to cable operation using a newly-patented side-grip style (designed to avoid paying Hallidie royalties on his patent), followed in short order by the creation or conversion of several other street railroads. in all, between 1873 and 1890, twenty-three different cable car lines run by eight different companies covered some 53 miles of cable track. of all those tracks, only three remain in operation today (all run by the San Francisco Municipal Railway).

popularity of cable cars began to decline with the advent electrical streetcars, which first arrived in San Francisco in 1892. the cost of constructing and operating electric streetcars proved significantly less than those of cable cars and by 1906 United Railroads of San Francisco (which owned most of the cable lines at that time) was campaigning to convert their existing lines to electric. opposition to the “unsightly” overhead electric cables was effectively silenced by the great earthquake and resulting fire, which destroyed most of the power houses, car barns, and 117 of the cable cars contained therein. by 1912, only 8 lines remained, all climbing gradients too steep for the electric cars to surmount. by 1944, facing competition from improved buses, only 5 cable car lines remained (two operated by Muni and one by Cal Cable – the third cable car company, established in 1878). in 1947, the Mayor proposed closing the remaining city-run lines but fierce community opposition scuttled the idea, though difficulty that Cal Cable encountered in procuring insurance in the early 1950s ultimately resulted in the closure of several lines and consolidation into the lines that remain today.

by the late 1970s, the existing cable car infrastructure had become unsafe and desperately needed repairs. then-mayor Dianne Feinstein spearheaded the effort to acquire the necessary  funds to completely rebuild the system; over two years, the entire system was replaced and updated. efforts to maintain the system are ongoing, with cars occasionally being refurbished and replaced and turntables for the single-end cars being updated.

our San Francisco wanderings found us at the end of the Powell-Mason line, running from near Fisherman’s Wharf to Powell & Market. taking the street car, rather than walking, wasn’t exactly convenient for our day’s activities – but riding the cable cars is one of those iconic things that you really ought to do while visiting the city. most of the riders seemed tourists – apparently the east-west California line is the one more often frequented by commuters.

Golden Gate Bridge

the last time I was in San Francisco, I was still very new to the idea of “running” and certainly didn’t consider using the descriptor on myself. but I’d brought my shoes with me and one morning a couple of us headed out from our hotel for (what now seems remarkably) an easy out-and-back run to Ghirardelli Square. I distinctly remember thinking, when my friend quipped “I’m going to sprint the last block!”, that she was completely nuts.

three years later, I proposed a run across the Golden Gate Bridge as one of our pillar sightseeing activities. what better way to see one of the most impressive engineering feats in American history than on foot! at slightly-faster-than-walking pace! the journey to get to the visitor’s center proved its own adventure and gave us a more street-level introduction to the city than perhaps anticipated (riding local public transit will do that).

prior to the construction of the bridge, getting from the city across the bay to Marin County required a ferry ride, which was subject to certain weather-related travel constraints and ultimately hampered the growth potential of the city. as the city and area grew, the need for a better means of travel became increasingly apparent as the growth rate of comparable cities outstripped San Francisco. ferries began running as early as the 1820s and regular service began in the 1840s, eventually becoming an extension of rail service. discussion of a bridge began around the same time but did not bear fruit until the 1930s.

for a long time, engineers held that, due to the depth of the channel, strong currents, persistent fog, and winds, building a bridge across the strait was impractical, if not impossible. in 1916, the City Engineer estimated, while theoretically possible, the cost of constructing a bridge could exceed $100 million – a prohibitive price tag – but allowed that a project might work, should it prove possible to do it for less. engineer Joseph Strauss (who designed a 55 mile railroad bridge over the Bering Strait) presented a plan for a cantilevered system joined by a suspension in the middle, the price of which came in at $17 million. the city assented to let him proceed on the condition he consult additional experts, who determined a suspension system the most practical for the site.

it took quite a few years of litigation and negotiation, however, before the project ultimately began construction. the Department of War feared a bridge could interfere with ship traffic or be a target for sabotage (terrorism); the railroads litigated because a bridge would compete directly with their ferry business. eventually the Department of War came around, even granting necessary land for construction on the San Francisco side; the fledgling auto industry supported the project, providing a useful counterbalance to the railroads, and serious design discussions began in 1923.

while Strauss was officially the chief engineer on the Golden Gate project, his initial design was both impractical and visually unappealing; in later years he spent a good amount of time downplaying the contributions of his collaborators, with an eye to posterity. Leon Moisseiff, who designed the Manhattan Bridge, championed the suspension design, while Charles Alton Ellis did much of the technical and theoretical work for the design, including figuring out how to preserve Fort Point at the foot of the southern end of the bridge. in 1931, Strauss fired Ellis from the project (for “wasting money” sending telegrams to Moisseiff for consulting purposes) but Ellis, who could not find subsequent work during the Depression, continued to work some 70 hours a week on calculations for the project. as a result of this dispute, Ellis received no credit for his work when the bridge opened in 1937 (that snub was corrected in 2007 in a governmental report, which gave Ellis major credit for the design).

funding for the Bridge, once it was ready to go up, proved challenging. after the crash of 1929, the Bridge & Highway District incorporated by the legislature to see the project through, was unable to raise funds for the project; they lobbied for a bond measure, which voters approved in 1930, but the bonds didn’t sell. ultimately, the founder of Bank of America (Amadeo Giannini) agreed to buy the lot in an effort to boost the local economy.

construction began on January 5, 1933, under Strauss’ supervision, and was completed in April 1937 (ahead of schedule and under budget. at the time of its completion, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world; today it is second only to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. until 1998, it was also the tallest, with the span towering 746 feet high and the span some 220 feet above the surface of the water. steel in the bridge was fabricated by Bethlehem Steel in plants in New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. it contains some 1.2 million rivets and over 80,000 miles of wire (with some 27,572 wires comprising one cable).

during the project, eleven workers died; one in October 1936, and ten in February when a portion of scaffolding fell through a safety net that hung below the work area. by contrast, the net saved the lives of some 19 men who fell from the work area; they became members of the informal Half-Way to Hell club.

proposals to install netting or higher fences to reduce suicides from the bridge in recent hears have not yet borne fruit. impediments to such measures have included cost, aesthetics, and concerns about what kind of effect additional weight might have on the structural integrity of the bridge. in 2008, the Bridge’s Board of Directors voted to approve a plastic-covered stainless steel net beneath and extending out from the bridge, but cost has prevented that from being installed. instead, information about a suicide helpline is installed at frequent intervals along the bridge, have trained volunteers and law enforcement officers to watch for people in distress, and closed the bridge to pedestrians at night. despite those efforts, however, the number of suicides each year remains high.

it remains one of the most iconic and visited landmarks in the United States. we saw countless pedestrians and tourists on rented bicycles traversing the span as we ourselves took it in on foot. San Francisco City Guides runs free walking tours of the bridge as well, for those that want to know more about the history of the bridge and its construction.

San Francisco City Hall


it seems a little odd to write about the San Francisco City Hall, as my strongest association with the site comes from the assassination of Harvey Milk and George Muscone, but it is a beautiful building that’s been host to many Important Events — including my deputization as a Marriage Commissioner (for a day)!

the building reopened in 1915, replacing the previous City Hall which was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and illuminates the “City Beautiful” movement that inspired architecture from the 1880s to 1910s. city planners hoped to rebuild the city in time for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition with the new City Hall and Civic Center as main focal points for the project. the dome is the fifth largest in the world and is 14 inches higher than the dome of the United States Capitol. the building encompasses two square blocks and is half a million square feet and, in spite of its impressive size, the previous building was even larger.

in addition to my personal Important Event on April 26 of this year, the building has seen its share of history. General Frederick Funston, a hero of wars around the turn of the 20th century and of the 1906 earthquake, lay in state under the rotunda in 1923 and although popular perception holds that President Warren G. Harding lay in state under the Rotunda following his death in San Francisco in the same year, the story appears false. it is true, however, that Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe wed at City Hall in 1954. in 1960, police turned fire houses on university students protesting against the House Un-American Activities Committee, washing them down the steps of the rotunda. the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake also left its mark on the building, twisting the dome four inches on its base and necessitating seismic retrofitting. and, as with probably every architecturally impressive building in the entire state of California numerous films will give you a thorough glimpse of the building and its offices.

check out images of the previous City Hall before and after the 1906 earthquake. pretty damn impressive.

Muir Woods

back in April, one of my best friends got married in Muir Woods and she asked me to officiate. the entire week in San Francisco was great and the location they selected truly unique. as with Becca and Dave’s ceremony at Devil’s Lake, it was great to be outside and fun to be tramping through nature in wedding-formal attire.

I visited Muir Woods once previously; on my first trip to California the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, my mom and I drove up from San Francisco to check out the redwoods. at one time, redwood forests covered much of the coast of northern California but during the late 19th century logging cleared much of the timber. a stand of old growth trees remained untouched north of San Francisco along Redwood Creek, due primarily to its relative inaccessibility (the main road from San Francisco to the National Monument is still a steep and windy thing). concerned for the safety of the redwood grove, in 1905 Congressman William Kent and his wife Elizabeth secured a loan from a sympathetic banker friend and purchased 611 acres of land for $45,000.

being held by private hands did not ensure the safety of the grove, however. in 1907 a water company in Sausalito unveiled plans to dam Redwood Creek and flood the valley and heart of the redwood grove. to circumvent the problem posed by local court proceedings brought by the water company, Kent donated 295 acres to the federal government and in January 1908, Theodore Roosevelt established the Muir Woods National Monument under the auspices of the 1906 Antiquities Act. Muir Woods became the 7th National Monument and the first created from lands donated by a private individual. the name for the site came at the recommendation of Kent who objected to having the site named after himself. as Muir was instrumental in establishing the national parks system, Kent later proved instrumental in establishing the National Parks Service and, in 1928, a 280 foot Douglas fir was named in his honor (after decades of environmental buffeting, the tree toppled in 2003 and remains where it fell).

despite the inaccessibility that initially kept the redwoods safe, the Monument enjoys immense popularity due in part to its proximity to San Francisco. when the Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937, attendance at the park tripled (to 180,000). it now receives more than three-quarters of a million visitors a year. our little troop accounted for at least a few of those visitors over the two days we went up to rehearse and conduct Lindsey & Andy’s wedding ceremony!

Coit Tower

located atop Telegraph Hill, the 210-foot Coit Tower offers spectacular views of San Francisco and the Bay. it was built in 1933 at the bequest of Lillian Hitchcock Coit, who left a third of her sizable estate the city to construct some sort of “beautifying” monument. the resulting tower, made of reinforced concrete, is a memorial to San Francisco firefighters.

until 1866, volunteers fought the fires that frequently broke out in the wooden structures of San Francisco. this meant hauling Engines up and down the steep hills of San Francisco in order to reach the site of the blazes. at the age of 15, Lillie Coit saw Engine No. 5 in action and, noticing it was short-handed, chucked her schoolbooks in order to lend a hand, enlisting bystanders to help push the Engine up Telegraph Hill. from that day forward, Lillie was an honorary mascot of the Engine company, embracing the hard-drinking, gambling, smoking, and pants-waring habits of her heroes.

in addition to being a memorial to firefighters, murals painted in the lobby of the tower depict the diverse activities of working people. carried out by the Public Works of Art Project, critics condemned the the murals and artists as communist for decades. these criticisms ultimately backfired as they engendered pride among San Franciscans and helped turn the Tower into one of the iconic images of the city.

Mystery Spot!

one tourist trap that I long wanted to visit in Santa Cruz: the Mystery Spot.
managed to convince everyone to take the jaunt up into the hills for what proved a thoroughly entertaining visit to this nook of warped perspectives (and/or reality). whatever causes the place to do what it does … I enjoyed it. Gabrielle and I took our turns fudging with our heights with respect to one another. we all climbed a ladder on the wall of the shack like stairs. Tanya stood in a line up of tall people to short people, which then reversed and everyone appeared the same height. the experience was rather disorienting (as, I take, it ought to be) but lots of fun. the best $5 tourist trap I’ve ever visited, for sure.

for more info, visit the official Mystery Spot website

if you’re going to San Francisco…

and now for something completely different …

you all know that I can’t keep still and I’ll travel almost anywhere, given the opportunity.
in October, having returned from Ireland just four weeks previously, I flew out to Santa Cruz to visit with some college friends for our Fourth Annual Pi Phi Homecoming. on Saturday, we drove up to San Francisco with the intention of seeing Fisherman’s Wharf, Ghiardelli Square, Pier 39 and the Golden Gate Bridge.
of course, events did not proceed as envisioned and we spent a great deal more time in the car than planned. we drove through the heart of the Castro, which I was pretty excited about. no one else seemed particularly interested (not the least, I’d wager, because several of them hadn’t seen “Milk”), and while I would have enjoyed the opportunity to explore, I was satisfied for the time being with our driving tour.
things took a turn for the frustrating and colorfully-worded when we hit the Embarcadero. turns out, the Saturday we drove into San Francisco was the same day as the Air Show over the Bay. the same Air Show that visits San Diego every fall heads north the following weekend and we pulled up just as things were getting started.

ultimately, after devouring a much celebrated cafe lunch on Geary (in Central Richmond), we agreed that we ought not head back to Santa Cruz without visiting *anything* tourist in San Francisco, and headed back towards the Presidio and Golden Gate Bridge. we parked on top of the hill — the road back down under the Bridge to level with the bay was closed off in preparation for the air show. we walked to the Golden Gate Bridge welcome center and saw the tail end of the show, fighter jets flying around the Bridge, over the Bay, past Alcatraz.

before we left, we all climbed up onto a cross-section of cable to take pictures. the piece is 36.5 inches in diameter and contains 27,572 individual wires. these three-yard-thick cables are what holds the bridge up as millions of cars cross it every year. some other fun facts that I have uncovered: the Bridge has only been closed due to weather, namely wind gusts, three times in its history, all in December. in 1951 gusts reached 69mph, in 1982 they topped 70mph, and in 1983 they reached 75mph.
the Bridge is also the most popular place in the U.S. to commit suicide (as well as one of the most popular in the world). since it opened in 1937, there are no solid figures as to the number of people who have jumped, only 26 people are known to have survived the fall and fatality rates are estimated to be 98 percent. there are hotline numbers and phones posted along the span of the bridge (similar to the ones posted along the canals in Galway), and, in addition to the highway patrol, iron workers volunteer their time to talk to or wrestle down suicidal people. the introduction of a safety net or suicide prevention barrier hasn’t gotten far, however, because of cost and vehement public opposition as to how such an addition would change the aesthetic of the Bridge. a year ago, the Bridge’s Board of Directors voted to install a plastic-covered stainless steel net beneath the bridge, extending twenty feet outwards on each side, but funding remains an impediment.