I left my heart in San Francisco, well maybe not my heart, but at least a load of memories.


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Published: August 9th 2009
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Another continent ticked off the list.

With my work done in Tasmania, l left the volunteers house early and headed towards the airport for an internal flight to Sydney, before the long journey onto San Francisco. I made it to the airport and checked in, after a year of airports with loads of flights it was the first time that my flight had been delayed. Unfortunately this would mean a hurried connection for my international flight including a change of terminal at Sydney. But there was to be good news too, l had been upgraded to Business Class for my international flight so in the end l didn’t mind one little bit.

The domestic flight left about an hour late and once in the terminal l quickly found the right terminal and even had time to get the tax refunded on the purchases l had made whilst in Australia. With a few minutes to spare l arrived at the boarding gate just as they were announcing the boarding of the San Francisco flight.

Champagne in hand and off we go, to the US of A

It’s so different when you’re boarding in Business Class rather than cattle class. First of all as soon as you sit down you are offered a glass of champagne, so of course l took two, l even had time to have four before we took off, it would have been rude not too. I was even lucky enough to be seated on the first row of business class so l had even more legroom on the 14-hour flight. With your own personnel TV screen and movies on demand, a menu for dinner including a choice of meals with wines and even made to order snacks whenever you wanted them, the flight passed quiet quickly.

I arrived in America two hours before l had even left Australia

With passing the International Date Line l arrived in America in the Sunday morning and this meant having two Sunday’s in one day. My aim was to stay up for as long as l could to try and beat the jet lag.

A couple of months back the US had changed its immigration policy, meaning that all foreign visitors had to fill in an electronic visa form on-line. This was in its infant stage so we still had to fill in the paper version too. Since 911 l know that going through immigration can be a bit of a nightmare here too, but l did not expect the hundred and one question about the way l planned to be in America for so long if l was only here on holiday. After nearly having to show them proof that l had my own funds and was not going to look for employment in the USA l finally was let in and headed towards the exit from the airport. Not before being stopped once again by another immigration office and the whole process of questions started once again. Twenty minutes later l was standing outside the airport and enjoying a cigarette.

The welcome heat of San Francisco was a surprise after the cold weather in Tasmania. I was soon in a Taxi and on my way to the real City of San Francisco and within about 25 minutes the Taxi driver pulled up by the curb and told me l was at Fulton Street.

“ That’s nice, mate” I said.
“$45, please”
By this stage l must have gave a confused looked towards the driver.
“Well then”
“This does not look like the picture of the apartment l have rented”
“Well this is 927 Fulton Street”
“No, l said 927 14th Street”

So after another 10 minutes l finally arrived outside the apartment l had seen in the pictures on the website that l had booked this apartment.

With my luggage on the roadside Sam & Joel the owners of the apartment were soon opening the gate and the warm welcomes followed.

The house was been split into a basement apartment, the owner’s apartment and an upstairs one. I had rented the top one and was soon being shown around the newly refurbished home. Artwork and ceramic’s fill the apartment that have all been made by both Sam & Joel. The whole apartment was made to fill homely and very welcoming. Inside was a main living room with a white leather sofa bed, wide screen TV and a desk with speakers and room for my laptop.

The Kitchen was huge with a large refrigerator with ice machine. Large cooker and a great dinning room table in the centre, which had been laid up (Just like House & Country Magazine). A door lead out to a balcony with a table and chair that looked over a beautiful garden and the view all around will be one that l will remember.
The bedroom was big enough and with fitted closet space too. With Brain and John coming over to stay with me next week we had more than enough space for us here.

My aim for the first week was to relax

Sam & Joel were eager to tell me all about the area and help me make the most of my stay here. They had made sure that everything any one needs in a holiday-let apartment is there and this is one of the things that made it so homely for me.

My aim before the two guys arrived next week was to catch up on some sleep, travel blogs and emails etc. So that by the time they arrived we could explore the city.

One skype call later and OMG

So with my laptop up and ready it was time to start catching up and the normal day to day things like banking, emails and blogs, Ok as well as Facebook too. Jason then appeared on Facebook and we were soon chatting on Skype and having not spoken for a while it was good to hear from him once again. Ten minutes after the call from Jason he calls me again to tell me that he was thinking.

“Do you mind if l come over and see you”?
“Of course, when?”
“Friday”

I put the call down and well it takes me a few minutes to realise that Jason is going to fly over from South Africa on Friday to see me.

The next couple of days go by with me just relaxing and getting used to the local area around me. Joel took me out with him shopping one day to show me around and the three of us even went out for a nice Indian meal one evening too. Friday arrives and l make my way back to the airport to wait for Jason to arrive from a domestic flight.

Friends never change, thank god!

Jason soon arrives and it was just like seeing him a couple of days ago. We were soon laughing and before we picked up his luggage were outside having a quick fag. Down at the baggage claim is where the real fun started. Jason had arrived in the US with an empty suitcase, so that he could go shopping and fill it whilst here. When he arrived in the US before his domestic flight he brought two 2-litre bottles of vodka. He was told that he couldn’t take them on the flight so he had to put them in his suitcase. Yes you guessed it. One of them had smashed in the case and outside we were soon cleaning out the glass from the case.

The flight from Johannesburg had taken over 30 hours to get to San Francisco so we made our way back to the apartment and after a couple of drinks we made our way to Castro, about a 5 minute walk from the apartment.

Castro Facts

The Castro District, commonly known as The Castro, is a neighborhood within Eureka Valley in San Francisco, California. It is widely considered the world's best known gay neighborhood having transformed from a working-class neighborhood through the 1960s and 1970s. It remains a symbol and source of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) activism and events.

San Francisco's gay village is mostly concentrated in the business district that is located on Castro Street from Market Street to 19th Street. It extends down Market Street toward Church Street and on both sides of the Castro neighborhood from Church Street to Eureka Street. Although the greater gay community was, and is, concentrated in the Castro, many gay people live in the surrounding residential areas bordered by Corona Heights, the Mission District, Noe Valley, Twin Peaks, and Haight-Ashbury neighborhoods. Some consider it to include Duboce Triangle and Dolores Heights, which both have a strong LGBT presence.

Castro Street itself, which originates a few blocks north at the intersection of Divisadero and Waller Streets, runs south through Noe Valley, crossing the 24th Street business district and ending as a continuous street a few blocks farther south as it moves toward the Glen Park neighborhood. It reappears in several discontinuous sections before ultimately terminating at Chenery Street, in the heart of Glen Park.

The History

Stores on Castro near the intersection with 18th Street. Rainbow flags, which are commonly associated with gay pride, are hung as banners on streetlights along the road.

Castro Street was named for José Castro (1808-1860), a leader of Mexican opposition to U.S. rule in California in the 19th century, and governor of Alta California from 1835-1836. The neighborhood now known as the Castro was born in 1887 when the Market Street Cable Railway built a line linking Eureka Valley to downtown.
From 1910 to 1920, the Castro was known as "Little Scandinavia" on account of the number of people of Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Finnish ancestry who lived there. A Finnish bathhouse (Finilla's) dating from this period was located behind the Cafe Flore on Market Street until 1986. The Cove on Castro diner used to be called The Norse Cove. The Scandinavian Seamen's Union was near 15th Street and Market, just around the corner from the Swedish-American Hall which remains in the district. Scandinavian-style "half-timber"

construction can still be seen in some of the buildings along Market Street between Castro and Church Streets.
The Castro became a working-class Irish neighborhood in the 1930s and remained so until the mid-1960s.
There was originally a cable car line with large double-ended cable cars that ran along Castro Street from Market Street to 29th St. until the tracks were dismantled in 1941 and it was replaced by the 24 bus.

According to Morgan Spurlock, who filmed "Straight Man in a Gay World", a 2005 episode of his documentary TV series 30 Days in the Castro, the U.S. military offloaded thousands of gay servicemen in San Francisco during World War II after they were discharged for being homosexuals. Many settled in the Castro, and this began the influx of homosexuals to the Castro neighborhood.

The Castro came of age as a gay center following the Summer of Love in the neighboring Haight-Ashbury district in 1967. The gathering brought tens of thousands of middle-class youth from all over the United States. The neighborhood, previously known as Eureka Valley, became known as the Castro, after the landmark theatre by that name near the corner of Castro and Market Streets. Many San Francisco gays also moved there after about 1970 from what had been the formerly most prominent gay neighborhood, Polk Gulch, because large Victorian houses were available at low rents or available for purchase for low down payments when their former middle-class owners had moved to the suburbs.

By 1973, Harvey Milk had opened a camera store there, Castro Camera, and began political involvement as a gay activist, further contributing to the notion of the Castro as a gay destination. Some of the culture of the late 1970s included what was termed the "Castro Clone," a mode of dress and personal grooming -- tight denim pants, black or desert sand colored combat boots, tight T-shirt or, often, an Izod crocodile shirt, possibly a red plaid flannel outer shirt, and usually sporting a mustache or full beard -- in vogue with the gay male population at the time, and which gave rise to the nickname "Clone Canyon" for the stretch of Castro Street between 18th and Market Streets. There were numerous famous watering holes in the area, contributing to the nightlife, including the Corner Grocery Bar, Toad Hall, the Pendulum, the Midnight Sun, Twin Peaks, and the Elephant Walk. A typical daytime street scene of the period is perhaps best illustrated by mentioning the male belly dancers who could be found holding forth in good weather at the corner of 18th and Castro, on "Hibernia Beach," in front of the financial institution from which it drew its name. Then at night, after the bars closed at 2 AM, the men remaining at that hour often would line up along the sidewalk of 18th Street to indicate that they were still available to go home with someone.

The area was hit hard by the AIDS/HIV crisis of the 1980s. Beginning in 1984, city officials began a crackdown on bathhouses and launched initiatives that aimed to prevent the spread of AIDS. Kiosks lining Market Street and Castro Street now have posters promoting safe sex and testing right alongside those advertising online dating services.

First Night on the Town and we were home by 9pm

Like myself when l arrived in the states from Australia the jet-lag was never ending and after a couple of drinks, l say a couple, but by American standards more like 10 vodka and coke we were spinning and ready to relax back at the apartment. Over the next couple of day the two of us spent the days shopping, and when l say say shopping l mean SHOPPING.

With Macy's and every other known shop on earth more or less here in San Francisco we were up early and on the tram to the centre of the city and hitting the shops. It was also to Jason's delight that l liked shopping too and we spent hours of our time laughing and running around the stores and having store assistants running around after us with Sunglasses, Watches, Underwear and anything else that took our fancy.

Another day and another couple of house guests

The apartment was able to sleep 4 people and it was great to have another couple of friends join me and Jason at the apartment. So by mid-day the two of us were back on the Muni Tram and the Metro back to the airport to collect Brain and John. I had on purpose not done any sightseeing until all four of us were all together. So after Brian and John had got over their Jet-Lag were set of to the famous tourist spot of Pier 39.

Pier 39 is a shopping center and popular tourist attraction built on a pier in San Francisco, California. At Pier 39, there are shops, restaurants, a video arcade, street performances, an interpretive center for the Marine Mammal Center, the Aquarium of the Bay, virtual 3D rides, and views of California sea lions hauled out on docks on Pier 39's marina. The marina is also home to the floating Forbes Island restaurant. A two-story carousel is one of the pier's more dominant features, although it is not directly visible from the street and sits towards the end of the pier. The family-oriented entertainment and presence of marine mammals make this a popular tourist location for families with children.

The pier is located at the edge of the Fisherman's Wharf district and is close to North Beach, Chinatown, and the Embarcadero. The area is easily accessible via the historic F Market streetcars.

On the San Francisco Cable Cars, well you have too!!!!

We spent a few hours walking around the Pier area with its shops and even watched the huge seals floating in the harbor, before taking the biggest icon of all in San Francisco, the Cable Car up and down the streets of San Francisco. The driving force behind the San Francisco cable car system came from a man who witnessed a horrible accident on a typically damp summer day in 1869. Andrew Smith Hallidie saw the toll slippery grades could extract when a horse- drawn streetcar slid backwards under its heavy load. The steep slope with wet cobblestones and a heavily weighted vehicle combined to drag five horses to their deaths. Although such a sight would stun anyone, Hallidie and his partners had the know-how to do something about the problem.

Hallidie had been born in England and moved to the U.S. in 1852. His father filed the first patent in Great Britain for the manufacture of wire- rope. As a young man, Hallidie found uses for this technology in California's Gold Country. He used the wire-rope when designing and building a suspension bridge across Sacramento's American River. He also found another use for the wire-rope when pulling heavy ore cars out of the underground mines on tracks. The technology was in place for pulling cable cars.

The next step bringing Hallidie closer to his fate was moving his wire- rope manufacturing to San Francisco. All that was now needed was seeing the accident for the idea to become full blown-a cable car railway system to deal with San Francisco's fearsome hills.

After a short wait it was time for the 4 of us to board the cable car, well we certainly were not gonna sit inside for this one. We were gonna ride it true San Francisco style. So we rushed to the other side of the car and stood on the outer board so that we could stand up all the way and hold onto the bars as we went up and down the hills. this was so much fun, even when another cable car came flying now the hill past us with about 4 inches to spare.

I was at Mardi Gras in Sydney, how lucky am l to now be in San Francisco for Gay Pride too!!

San Francisco throws one of the more colorful and prominent Gay Pride festivals in the world, with the key events taking place over the last weekend in June (on June 27-28 in 2009). Like many other cities that celebrate pride in June, San Francisco does so at this time in part to honor what many consider to be one of the foremost events in the history of lesbian and gay rights, New York City's Stonewall Riots, which commenced early in the morning on June 28, 1969. Of course, San Francisco has a rich and lengthy history of gay rights, and the city's Pride events are well-attended, well-organized, and great fun for visitors - it's also reputed to be the largest Gay Pride celebration in the United States, and with gay marriage having been legalized in May 2008, then faced with a voter repeal in the name of Proposition 8 in November 2008, you can bet that 2009 Pride generated plenty of excitement (it also marks the 40th annivesary of Stonewall). We arrived in plenty of time and as the parade started both myself and Jason soon discovered it would be along parade. In fact after a good 3 hours and still no sign of it ending we made our way to the area in front of the city hall were hundreds of stalls and food outlets were busy. with a needed cold beer in hand we rested before seeing what else this amazing parade had to offer.

If you have not seen Oscar winning the film 'Milk' see it!!!!

During our many walks into the Catro area and it's many bars we found the Camera Shop owned by Harvey Milk, it is now a Boutique shop selling lamps, table and other expensive bric-a-brac. Of course we had to have our picture taken outside.

Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 - November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Politics and gay activism were not Milk's early interests; he did not feel the need to be open about his homosexuality or participate in civic matters until around age 40, after his experiences in the counterculture of the 1960s.

Milk moved from New York City to settle in San Francisco in 1972 amid a migration of gay men moving to the Castro District in the 1970s. He took advantage of the growing political and economic power of the neighborhood to promote his interests, and ran unsuccessfully for political office three times. His theatrical campaigns earned him increasing popularity, and Milk won a seat as a city supervisor in 1977, a result of the broader social changes the city was experiencing.

Milk served 11 months in office and was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for the city. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor who had recently resigned but wanted his job back. Milk's rise to political power was as symbolic as it was real. His election signified and was made possible by a shift in San Francisco politics. The assassinations and the ensuing events were the results of continuing ideological conflicts in the city.

Despite his short career in politics, Milk became an icon in San Francisco and "a martyr for gay rights", according to University of San Francisco professor Peter Novak. In 2002, Milk was called "the most famous and most significantly open LGBT official ever elected in the United States". Anne Kronenberg, his final campaign manager, wrote of him: "What set Harvey apart from you or me was that he was a visionary. He imagined a righteous world inside his head and then he set about to create it for real, for all of us."Milk will be posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama, to be presented on August 12, 2009.

Goodbye Jason, see you when l get back to South Africa in February 2010.

The main tourist attractions were yet to come and once Jason had left the three of us spent the day doing the usual thing in San Francisco. We took the Muni to Embarcadero along the San Francisco Bay and took the long walk towards Pier 39 once again. This time we stopped for lunch at one of the many restaurants serving Clam Chowder, which did not disappoint and great Fish & Chips. Once refueled we took the long walk up towards Lombard Street.

Lombard Street is best known for the one-way section on Russian Hill between Hyde and Leavenworth Streets, in which the roadway has eight sharp turns (or switchbacks) that have earned the street the distinction of being "the crookedest street in the world."The switchbacks design, first suggested by property owner Carl Henry and instituted in 1922, was born out of necessity in order to reduce the hill's natural 27%!g(MISSING)rade, which was too steep for most vehicles to climb. It is also a serious hazard to pedestrians, who are accustomed to a more reasonable sixteen-degree incline. The crooked section of the street, which is about 1/4 mile (400 m) long, is reserved for one-way traffic traveling east (downhill) and is paved with red bricks. The speed limit in this section is a mere 5 mph (8 km/h). In the 1950s the street was gardened by a Frenchmen who owned the Bercut meat market.

The views either looking up or down on this street are amazing as well as the view of the city from the top of Lombard. After walking up and down this icon it was time for a much needed beer so once on the main street we stopped for a couple light refreshments before the day continued.

The Golden Gate Bridge, another of this cities great icons

We took the Muni to the last stop on N line to Ocean. Once on the Pacific Ocean we walked along the sandy beach, watching as life went by as children and adults played Football, Baseball and kites. Even surfing on the waves of the Pacific was great to watch on this rather windy and overcast day. We soon, well after a few hours of walking finally saw our first sight of the Golden Gate Bridge. so with still a good few miles to go we boarded a bus to the main stop before the bridge.

The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the opening of the San Francisco Bay onto the Pacific Ocean. As part of both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1, it connects the city of San Francisco on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula to Marin County. The Golden Gate Bridge was the longest suspension bridge span in the world when it was completed during the year 1937, and has become an internationally recognized symbol of San Francisco and California. Since its completion, the span length has been surpassed by eight other bridges. It still has the second longest suspension bridge main span in the United States, after the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City. In 2007, it was ranked fifth on the List of America's Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects.

Before the bridge was built, the only practical short route between San Francisco and what is now Marin County was by boat across a section of San Francisco Bay. Ferry service began as early as 1820, with regularly scheduled service beginning in the 1840s for purposes of transporting water to San Francisco. The Sausalito Land and Ferry Company service, launched in 1867, eventually became the Golden Gate Ferry Company, a Southern Pacific Railroad subsidiary, the largest ferry operation in the world by the late 1920s. Once for railroad passengers and customers only, Southern Pacific's automobile ferries became very profitable and important to the regional economy. The ferry crossing between the Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco and Sausalito in Marin County took approximately 20 minutes and cost US$1.00 per vehicle, a price later reduced to compete with the new bridge. The trip from the San Francisco Ferry Building took 27 minutes.

Many wanted to build a bridge to connect San Francisco to Marin County. San Francisco was the largest American city still served primarily by ferry boats. Because it did not have a permanent link with communities around the bay, the city’s growth rate was below the national average. Many experts said that a bridge couldn’t be built across the 6,700 ft (2,042 m) strait. It had strong, swirling tides and currents, with water 500 ft (150 m) in depth at the center of the channel, and frequent strong winds. Experts said that ferocious winds and blinding fogs would prevent construction and operation.

Conception

Although the idea of a bridge spanning the Golden Gate was not new, the proposal that eventually took place was made in a 1916 San Francisco Bulletin article by former engineering student James Wilkins. San Francisco's City Engineer estimated the cost at $100 million, impractical for the time, and fielded the question to bridge engineers of whether it could be built for less. One who responded, Joseph Strauss, was an ambitious but dreamy engineer and poet who had, for his graduate thesis, designed a 55-mile (89 km) long railroad bridge across the Bering Strait. At the time, Strauss had completed some 400 drawbridges—most of which were inland—and nothing on the scale of the new project. Strauss's initial drawings were for a massive cantilever on each side of the strait, connected by a central suspension segment, which Strauss promised could be built for $17 million.

Local authorities agreed to proceed only on the assurance that Strauss alter the design and accept input from several consulting project experts. A suspension-bridge design was considered the most practical, because of recent advances in metallurgy.

Strauss spent more than a decade drumming up support in Northern California. The bridge faced opposition, including litigation, from many sources. The Department of War was concerned that the bridge would interfere with ship traffic; the navy feared that a ship collision or sabotage to the bridge could block the entrance to one of its main harbors. Unions demanded guarantees that local workers would be favored for construction jobs. Southern Pacific Railroad, one of the most powerful business interests in California, opposed the bridge as competition to its ferry fleet and filed a lawsuit against the project, leading to a mass boycott of the ferry service. In May 1924, Colonel Herbert Deakyne held the second hearing on the Bridge on behalf of the Secretary of War in a request to use Federal land for construction. Deakyne, on behalf of the Secretary of War, approved the transfer of land needed for the bridge structure and leading roads to the "Bridging the Golden Gate Association" and both San Francisco County and Marin County, pending further bridge plans by Strauss. Another ally was the fledgling automobile industry, which supported the development of roads and bridges to increase demand for automobiles.

The bridge's name was first used when the project was initially discussed in 1917 by M.H. O'Shaughnessy, city engineer of San Francisco, and Strauss. The name became official with the passage of the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District Act by the state legislature in 1923.

Design

Strauss was chief engineer in charge of overall design and construction of the bridge project. However, because he had little understanding or experience with cable-suspension designs, responsibility for much of the engineering and architecture fell on other experts.

Irving Morrow, a relatively unknown residential architect, designed the overall shape of the bridge towers, the lighting scheme, and Art Deco elements such as the streetlights, railing, and walkways. The famous International Orange color was originally used as a sealant for the bridge. Many locals persuaded Morrow to paint the bridge in the vibrant orange color instead of the standard silver or gray, and the color has been kept ever since.

Senior engineer Charles Alton Ellis, collaborating remotely with famed bridge designer Leon Moisseiff, was the principal engineer of the project. Moisseiff produced the basic structural design, introducing his "deflection theory" by which a thin, flexible roadway would flex in the wind, greatly reducing stress by transmitting forces via suspension cables to the bridge towers. Although the Golden Gate Bridge design has proved sound, a later Moisseiff design, the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, collapsed in a strong windstorm soon after it was completed, because of an unexpected aeroelastic flutter.

Ellis was a Greek scholar and mathematician who at one time was a University of Illinois professor of engineering despite having no engineering degree (he eventually earned a degree in civil engineering from University of Illinois prior to designing the Golden Gate Bridge and spent the last twelve years of his career as a professor at Purdue University). He became an expert in structural design, writing the standard textbook of the time. Ellis did much of the technical and theoretical work that built the bridge, but he received none of the credit in his lifetime. In November 1931, Strauss fired Ellis and replaced him with a former subordinate, Clifford Paine, ostensibly for wasting too much money sending telegrams back and forth to Moisseiff. Ellis, obsessed with the project and unable to find work elsewhere during the Depression, continued working 70 hours per week on an unpaid basis, eventually turning in ten volumes of hand calculations.

With an eye toward self-promotion and posterity, Strauss downplayed the contributions of his collaborators who, despite receiving little recognition or compensation, are largely responsible for the final form of the bridge. He succeeded in having himself credited as the person most responsible for the design and vision of the bridge. Only much later were the contributions of the others on the design team properly appreciated. In May 2007, the Golden Gate Bridge district issued a formal report on 70 years of stewardship of the famous bridge and decided to right an old wrong by giving Ellis major credit for the design of the bridge.

Finance

The Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District, authorized by an act of the California Legislature, was incorporated in 1928 as the official entity to design, construct, and finance the Golden Gate Bridge. However, after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the District was unable to raise the construction funds, so it lobbied for a $35 million bond measure. The bonds were approved in November 1930, by votes in the counties affected by the bridge. The construction budget at the time of approval was $30.1 million. However, the District was unable to sell the bonds until 1932, when Amadeo Giannini, the founder of San Francisco-based Bank of America, agreed on behalf of his bank to buy the entire issue in order to help the local economy.

Construction

Construction began on January 5, 1933. The project cost more than $35 million. Strauss remained head of the project, overseeing day-to-day construction and making some groundbreaking contributions. A graduate of the University of Cincinnati, he had placed a brick from his alma mater's demolished McMicken Hall in the south anchorage before the concrete was poured. He innovated the use of movable safety netting beneath the construction site, which saved the lives of many otherwise-unprotected steelworkers. Of eleven men killed from falls during construction, ten were killed (when the bridge was near completion) when the net failed under the stress of a scaffold that had fallen. Nineteen others who were saved by the net over the course of construction became proud members of the (informal) Halfway to Hell Club. The project was finished by April 1937, $1.3 million under budget.

Opening festivities

The bridge-opening celebration began on 27 May 1937 and lasted for one week. The day before vehicle traffic was allowed, 200,000 people crossed by foot and roller skate. On opening day, Mayor Angelo Rossi and other officials rode the ferry to Marin, then crossed the bridge in a motorcade past three ceremonial "barriers," the last a blockade of beauty queens who required Joseph Strauss to present the bridge to the Highway District before allowing him to pass. An official song, "There's a Silver Moon on the Golden Gate," was chosen to commemorate the event. Strauss wrote a poem that is now on the Golden Gate Bridge entitled "The Mighty Task is Done." The next day, President Roosevelt pushed a button in Washington, DC signaling the official start of vehicle traffic over the Bridge at noon. When the celebration got out of hand, the SFPD had a small riot in the uptown Polk Gulch area. Weeks of civil and cultural activities called "the Fiesta" followed. A statue of Strauss was moved in 1955 to a site near the bridge.

Suicides

The Golden Gate Bridge is the most popular place to commit suicide in the United States and is one of the most popular in the world. The deck is approximately 245 feet (75 m) above the water. After a fall of approximately four seconds, jumpers hit the water at some 86 miles per hour (138 km/h), which is often fatal in and by itself. Some of those who survive the initial impact drown or die of hypothermia in the cold water.

There is no accurate figure on the number of suicides or successful jumps since 1937, because many were not witnessed. People have been known to travel to San Francisco specifically to jump off the bridge, and may take a bus or cab to the site; police sometimes find abandoned rental cars in the parking lot. Currents beneath the bridge are very strong, and some jumpers have undoubtedly been washed out to sea without ever being seen. The water may be as cold as 47 °F (8 °C).

An official suicide count was kept, sorted according to which of the bridge's 128 lamp posts the jumper was nearest when he or she jumped. The count exceeded 1,200 in 2005, and new suicides were averaging one every two weeks. For comparison, the reported second-most-popular place to commit suicide in the world, Aokigahara Forest in Japan, has a record of 78 bodies, found within the forest in 2002, with an average of 30 a year. There were 34 bridge-jump suicides in 2006 whose bodies were recovered, in addition to four jumps that were witnessed but whose bodies were never recovered, and several bodies recovered suspected to be from bridge jumps. The California Highway Patrol removed 70 apparently suicidal people from the bridge that year.
The fatality rate of jumping is roughly 98%. As of 2006, only 26 people are known to have survived the jump. Those who do survive strike the water feet-first and at a slight angle, although individuals may still sustain broken bones or internal injuries. One young man survived a jump in 1979, swam to shore, and drove himself to a hospital. The impact cracked several of his vertebrae.

Engineering professor Natalie Jeremijenko, as part of her Bureau of Inverse Technology art collective, created a "Despondency Index" by correlating the Dow Jones Industrial Average with the number of jumpers detected by "Suicide Boxes" containing motion-detecting cameras, which she claimed to have set up under the bridge. The boxes purportedly recorded 17 jumps in three months, far greater than the official count. The Whitney Museum, although questioning whether Jeremijenko's suicide-detection technology actually existed, nevertheless included her project in its prestigious Whitney Biennial.

As a suicide prevention initiative, this sign promotes a special telephone available on the bridge that connects to a crisis hotline. Various methods have been proposed and implemented to reduce the number of suicides. The bridge is fitted with suicide hotline telephones, and staff patrol the bridge in carts, looking for people who appear to be planning to jump. Iron workers on the bridge also volunteer their time to prevent suicides by talking or wrestling down suicidal people. The bridge is now closed to pedestrians at night. Cyclists are still permitted across at night, but must be buzzed in and out through the remotely controlled security gates. Attempts to introduce a suicide barrier had been thwarted by engineering difficulties, high costs, and public opposition. One recurring proposal had been to build a barrier to replace or augment the low railing, a component of the bridge's original architectural design. New barriers have eliminated suicides at other landmarks around the world, but were opposed for the Golden Gate Bridge for reasons of cost, aesthetics, and safety (the load from a poorly designed barrier could significantly affect the bridge's structural integrity during a strong windstorm).

Strong appeals for a suicide barrier, fence, or other preventive measures were raised once again by a well-organized vocal minority of psychiatry professionals, suicide barrier consultants, and families of jumpers after the release of the controversial 2006 documentary film The Bridge, in which filmmaker Eric Steel and his production crew spent one year (2004) filming the bridge from several vantage points, capturing a number of suicide jumps as well as a handful of thwarted attempts. The film also contained interviews with surviving family members of those who jumped; interviews with witnesses; and, in one segment, an interview with Kevin Hines who, as a 19-year-old in 2000, survived a suicide plunge from the span and is now a vocal advocate for some type of bridge barrier or net to prevent such incidents from occurring.

On October 10, 2008, the Golden Gate Bridge Board of Directors voted 14 to 1 to install a plastic-covered stainless-steel net below the bridge as a suicide deterrent. The net will extend 18 feet (six meters) on either side of the bridge and is expected to cost $40-50 million to complete.

Fourth of July in America too, this time on the San Francisco Bay to watch the fireworks.

In the United States, Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts, baseball games, political speeches and ceremonies, and various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States. Independence Day is the national day of the United States.

One of the most enduring myths about Independence Day is that Congress signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The myth had become so firmly established that, decades after the event and nearing the end of their lives, even the elderly Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had come to believe that they and the other delegates had signed the Declaration on the fourth. Most delegates actually signed the Declaration on August 2, 1776. In a remarkable series of coincidences, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two founding fathers of the United States and the only two men who signed the Declaration of Independence to become president, died on the same day: July 4, 1826, which was the United States' 50th anniversary. President James Monroe died exactly five years later, on July 4, 1831, but he was not a signatory to the Declaration of Independence.

So what better was to join in these celebration than too go aboard on of the many cruise boats on the Bay and watch the fireworks form there. With the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz in the background it was perfect. The captain then tuned in the ships speakers into the local radio station and the fireworks began, in time with the music. There were two firework launching points on the mainland and they were both in perfect time with each other.

Time to say goodbye once again.

Soon it was time to take Brain & John to the airport and have a few days to myself before making my way south to Los Angeles. The one thing l did want to do before l left was the 3rd main attraction of San Francisco, Alcatraz.

Alcatraz Island, commonly referred to as simply Alcatraz or the Rock, is a small island located in the middle of San Francisco Bay in California, United States. It served as a lighthouse, then a military fortification, then a military prison, and finally as a federal prison until 1963. Later, in 1972, it became a national recreation area in and received landmarking designations in 1976 and 1986.

Today, the island is a historic site operated by the National Park Service as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and is open to tours. Visitors can reach the island by ferry ride from Pier 33, near Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. Alcatraz has been featured in many movies, TV shows, cartoons, books, comics, and games.

The first Spaniard to discover the island was Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775, who charted San Francisco Bay and named the island "La Isla de los Alcatraces," which translates as "The Island of the Pelicans," from the archaic Spanish alcatraz, "pelican", a word which was borrowed originally from Arabic: القطرس al-qaṭrās, meaning sea eagle.

It is home to the now-abandoned prison, the site of the oldest operating lighthouse on the west coast of the United States, early military fortifications, and natural features such as rock pools, a seabird colony (mostly Western Gulls, cormorants, and egrets), and unique views of the coastline.

The earliest recorded owner of the island of Alcatraz is one Julian Workman, to whom it was given by Mexican governor Pio Pico in June 1846 with the understanding that the former would build a lighthouse on it. Julian Workman is the baptismal name of William Workman, co-owner of Rancho La Puente and personal friend of Pio Pico. Later in 1846, acting in his capacity as Military Governor of California, John C. Fremont, champion of Manifest Destiny and leader of the Bear Flag Republic, bought the island for $5000 in the name of the United States government from Francis Temple. In 1850, President Millard Fillmore ordered that Alcatraz Island be set aside specifically for military purposes based upon the U.S. acquisition of California from Mexico following the Mexican-American War. Fremont had expected a large compensation for his initiative in purchasing and securing Alcatraz Island for the U.S. government, but the U.S. government later invalidated the sale and paid Fremont nothing. Fremont and his heirs sued for compensation during protracted but unsuccessful legal battles that extended into the 1890's.

Following the acquisition of California by the United States as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) which ended the Mexican-American War, and the onset of the California Gold Rush the following year, the U.S. Army began studying the suitability of Alcatraz Island for the positioning of coastal batteries to protect the approaches to San Francisco Bay. In 1853, under the direction of Zealous B. Tower, the Corps of Engineers began fortifying the island, work which continued until 1858. The island's first garrison, numbering about 200 soldiers, arrived at the end of that year. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861 the island mounted 85 cannons (increased to 105 cannons by 1866) in casemates around its perimeter, though the small size of the garrison meant only a fraction of the guns could be used at one time. Alcatraz never fired its guns offensively, though during the war it was used to imprison Confederate sympathizers on the west coast.

Following the war in 1866 the army determined that the fortifications and guns were being rapidly rendered obsolete by advances in military technology. Modernization efforts, including an ambitious plan to level the entire island and construct shell-proof underground magazines and tunnels, were undertaken between 1870 and 1876 but never completed (the so called "parade ground" on the southern tip of the island represents the extent of the flattening effort). Instead the army switched the focus of its plans for Alcatraz from coastal defense to detention, a task for which it was well suited because of its isolation. In 1867 a brick jailhouse was built (previously inmates had been kept in the basement of the guardhouse), and in 1868 Alcatraz was officially designated a long-term detention facility for military prisoners. Among those incarcerated at Alcatraz were some Hopi Native American men in the 1870s.

On March 21, 1907, Alcatraz was officially designated as the Western U.S. Military Prison. In 1909 construction began on the huge concrete main cell block, designed by Major Reuben Turner, which remains the island's dominant feature. It was completed in 1912. To accommodate the new cell block, the Citadel, a three-story barracks, was demolished down to the first floor, which was actually below ground level. The building had been constructed in an excavated pit (creating a dry "moat") to enhance its defensive potential. The first floor was then incorporated as a basement to the new cell block, giving rise to the popular legend of "dungeons" below the main cell block.

During World War I the prison held conscientious objectors, including Philip Grosser, who wrote a pamphlet entitled 'Uncle Sam's Devil's Island' about his experiences.

Due to its isolation from the outside by the cold, strong, hazardous currents of the waters of San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz was used to house Civil War prisoners as early as 1861. In 1898, the Spanish-American war would increase the prison population from 26 to over 450. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, civilian prisoners were transferred to Alcatraz for safe confinement. By 1912 there was a large cellhouse, and in the 1920s a large 3-story structure was nearly at full capacity.

The United States Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz was acquired by the United States Department of Justice on October 12, 1933, and the island became a federal prison in August 1934. During the 29 years it was in use, the jail held such notable criminals as Al Capone, Robert Franklin Stroud (the Birdman of Alcatraz), George "Machine Gun" Kelly, James "Whitey" Bulger, and Alvin Karpis (who served more time at Alcatraz than any other inmate). It also provided housing for the Bureau of Prison staff and their families.

During its 29 years of operation, the penitentiary claimed no prisoners as ever having successfully escaped. 36 prisoners were involved in 14 attempts, two men trying twice; 23 were caught, six were shot and killed during their escape, and two were lost at sea and never found. The most violent occurred on May 2, 1946 when a failed escape attempt by six prisoners led to the so-called Battle of Alcatraz.

On June 11, 1962 Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin successfully carried out one of the most intricate escapes ever devised. Behind the prisoners' cells in Cell Block B (where the escapees were interned) was an unguarded 3-foot (0.91 m) wide utility corridor. The prisoners chiseled away the moisture-damaged concrete from around an air vent leading to this corridor, using tools such as a metal spoon soldered with silver from a dime and an electric drill improvised from a stolen vacuum cleaner motor. The noise was disguised by accordions played during music hour, and their progress was concealed by false walls which, in the dark recesses of the cells, fooled the guards.

The escape route then led up through a fan vent; the fan and motor had been removed and replaced with a steel grille, leaving a shaft large enough for a prisoner to climb through. Stealing a carborundum cord from the prison workshop, the prisoners had removed the rivets from the grille and substituted dummy rivets made of soap. The escapees also stole several raincoats to use as a raft for the trip to the mainland. Leaving papier-mâché dummies in their cells with paint brush bristles as hair, they escaped. The prisoners are estimated to have entered San Francisco Bay at 10 p.m.

The official investigation by the FBI was aided by another prisoner, Allen West, who also was part of the escapees' group but was left behind (West's false wall kept slipping so he held it into place with cement, which set; when the Anglin brothers (John & Clarence) accelerated the schedule, West desperately chipped away at the wall, but by the time he did his companions were gone). Articles belonging to the prisoners (including plywood paddles and parts of the raincoat raft) were located on nearby Angel Island, and the official report on the escape says the prisoners drowned while trying to reach the mainland in the cold waters of the bay.
The Mythbusters tested the myth that an escape is possible out of Alcatraz via this method.

Robert Stroud, who was better known to the public as the "Birdman of Alcatraz," was transferred to Alcatraz in 1942. He spent the next seventeen years on "the Rock" — six years in segregation in D Block, and eleven years in the prison hospital. In 1959 he was transferred to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri (MCFP Springfield).

When Al Capone arrived on Alcatraz in 1934, prison officials made it clear that he would not be receiving any preferential treatment. While serving his time in Atlanta, Capone, a master manipulator, had continued running his rackets from behind bars by buying off guards. "Big Al" generated incredible media attention while on Alcatraz though he served just four and a half years of his sentence there before developing symptoms of tertiary syphilis and being transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island in Los Angeles.
George "Machine Gun" Kelly arrived on September 4, 1934. At Alcatraz, Kelly was constantly boasting about several robberies and murders that he had never committed. Although this was said to be an apparent point of frustration for several fellow prisoners, Warden Johnson considered him a model inmate. Kelly was returned to Leavenworth in 1951.

James 'Whitey' Bulger spent 3 years on Alcatraz (1959-1962) while serving a sentence for bank robbery. While there, he became close to Clarence Carnes, also known as the Choctaw Kid.

By decision of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the penitentiary was closed on March 21, 1963. It was closed because it was far more expensive to operate than other prisons (nearly $10 per prisoner per day, as opposed to $3 per prisoner per day at Atlanta), half a century of salt water saturation had severely eroded the buildings, and the bay was being badly polluted by the sewage from the approximately 250 inmates and 60 Bureau of Prisons families on the island. The United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, a new, traditional land-bound prison opened that same year to serve as a replacement for Alcatraz.

Beginning on November 20, 1969, a group of Native Americans from many different tribes (many individual Native Americans relocated to the Bay Area under the Federal Indian Reorganization Act of 1934), occupied the island, and proposed an education center, ecology center and cultural center. According to the occupants, the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) between the U.S. and the Sioux returned all retired, abandoned or out-of-use federal land to the Native people from whom it was acquired.

The Native Americans demanded reparation of the broken treaties and for the land that was taken away from them. Historian Troy R. Johnson states in The Occupation of Alcatraz Island, that Indian people have known about Alcatraz 10,000 to 20,000 years before any European knew a thing about the land. During 1895, one of the largest Indian groups being held as military prisoners, were the Moqui Hopi. The Hopi refused to agree on a policy the U.S. government offered, opting for them to send their children to U.S. school, deteriorating their culture and forced assimilation. The point of the policy was to break any relations the Indians may have had with the U.S. government.

During the nineteen months and nine days of occupation, several buildings were damaged or destroyed by fires, including the recreation hall, the Coast Guard quarters and the Warden's home. The origins of the fires are unknown. A number of other buildings (mostly apartments) were destroyed by the U.S. Government after the occupation had ended. Graffiti from the period of Native American occupation are still visible at many locations on the island.

During the occupation, the Indian termination policy, designed to end federal recognition of tribes, was rescinded by President Richard Nixon, and the new policy of self-determination was established, in part as a result of the publicity and awareness created by the occupiers. The occupation ended on June 11, 1971.

Alcatraz would eventually result in the Trail of Broken Treaties and would influence the Longest Walk in 1985. The occupation of Alcatraz is assumed to have played a huge role for the Native Americans and is defined as a key movement. After fighting for what some felt was rightfully theirs, the U.S. government would return land to the Taos, Yakima, the Navajo and the Washoe tribes after a succession demands for Alcatraz.



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11th August 2009

san fran
fantastic photos, great memories indeed. See you soon xx
13th August 2009

so glad to hear you and jason are with each other and having a fantastic time loads of love hunny x x x

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