The Golden Gate Bridge is thought to be many things. To engineers, it’s a wonder; to photographers, a dream. To the poet, it’s an emblem—“the western bookend to the Brooklyn Bridge,” as Michiko Kakutani once wrote. To the troubled, it’s a provocation, an intolerable curiosity.
To all, it’s a source of awe, lending from every vantage the sense that what you’re looking at is not just beautiful, or impressive, but historic. John van der Zee, author of The Gate, called it “the most successful combination of site and structure since the Parthenon.”
To locals, of course, the bridge is essential; it’s home. My last apartment sat on the western slope of Russian Hill, and from its roof I was allowed a view of the Golden Gate that was just about perfect: panoramic, unencumbered, close enough to make out the art deco towers yet far enough to grasp the scale of the thing. Most afternoons, as the sun was starting to set and the fog was trundling in, I’d sit on a plastic chair and just stare at it, thinking to myself, “Holy shit,” and also, “This is ours” — and even, “This is mine.” With its bold and elegant strangeness, at once iconic and iconoclastic, the bridge seemed to reflect the best parts of the city and inform the way…
