I love the Golden Gate Bridge. I have no fewer than five prints, paintings and photos of the thing in my apartment. As for Instagram…yeah, I’m not even going to begin hand-counting all those posts.
Gazing upon the bridge’s distinctive orange towers brings me such a sense of peace, appreciation and joy. It’s almost embarrassing to admit that a man-made structure can make me feel that way, except that I know it has similarly captured the hearts and minds of countless Bay Area residents over the years.
Like many others, I first encountered the Golden Gate Bridge in college as a visitor the city. Little did I know that years later, the Golden Gate would be the backdrop of the very place I called home, and that eventually, I’d be riding my bike across the bridge on a regular basis, cursing the crowd of photo-snapping tourists that I was once a constituent of.
To be there in person — if you haven’t been in a while — is an absolute nightmare of selfie sticks and underutilized spatial-awareness skills.
You see, the Golden Gate Bridge is great. It’s beautiful; it’s iconic. And it’s an impressive feat of engineering too. But unless you’re a weekend warrior (or a diehard athlete) running or biking across its span each morning, you probably haven’t actually been to the Golden Gate Bridge in a very long time, have you? To be there in person — if you haven’t been in a while — is an absolute nightmare of selfie sticks and underutilized spatial-awareness skills.
More than 10 million people visit the Golden Gate Bridge each year. That translates, on average, to more than 27,000 visitors per day. That’s a lot of people walking, riding, driving and photographing one spot in San Francisco. But for perspective’s sake, let’s compare those stats with those of a few other notable tourist attractions here in the US: New York City’s Empire State Building only sees 3.5 million tourists annually. Roughly 4.5 million people visit the Statue of Liberty each year — just slightly more than the 4.25 million who journey to Yellowstone. And in Washington, DC, just under 8 million tourists trek to the Lincoln Memorial each year. More people come to see an orange art deco bridge than a monument honoring our country’s great emancipator (which, given the state of the country, might not be too surprising). The Golden Gate is, without a doubt, one of our nation’s most popular monuments. And unfortunately, it’s the main reason why, despite loving the bridge so dearly, it’s also a flaming mass of chaos that I — like many locals — try to avoid at all costs.
The Golden Gate Bridge isn’t like other SF tourist spots such as Fisherman’s Wharf or Ghirardelli Square, which, like Times Square, seem intentionally designed to appeal solely to tourists. I’d sooner walk barefoot around 16th and Mission than go anywhere near one of those tourist traps.
And unlike other tourist destinations in the city that locals may frequent, such as Golden Gate Park or even Union Square, the Golden Gate Bridge far more dramatically funnels and bottlenecks visitors into one spot — one spot that tourists and locals have to share. For those who trek across it for recreation or as part of their commute, it can make things incredibly hectic.
I’ve lost count of how many Blazing Saddles rental-bike riders I’ve passed, tears streaming down their face as they struggle to keep their bike upright.
“Everyone wants to see the bridge, and they should. But it gets a little crazy in the summer with tourists on bikes, riding a rental bike that doesn’t fit them, with one hand holding a selfie stick and their eyes never looking in front of them,” says Heather McDonald, a San Francisco resident of 17 years. “Saturday and Sunday afternoons can get really scary, with the combination of high winds and tourists who don’t realize that you need to stay to the right and pay attention.”
“I wish Caltrans would limit tourists to one side and the locals to the other.”
Most local cyclists have the sense not to speed across the bridge, but even at a cautious pace, danger lurks with every pedal stroke. I once yelled at a seven-year-old boy who nearly crashed into me while I was biking across the bridge (not my finest moment, but seriously, look before you turn your bike, kid). And I’ve lost count of how many Blazing Saddles rental-bike riders I’ve passed, tears streaming down their face as they struggle to keep their bike upright.
“I wish Caltrans would limit tourists to one side and the locals to the other,” another San Francisco resident, Meredith Stowe Christie, says. A brilliant idea. If only cyclists and runners had an “I’m a local” badge to present to a reformed Zeitgeist bouncer guarding the Western span of the bridge against pedestrians and bike riders donning Bermuda shorts during the 50-degree San Francisco “summer.”
Don’t get me wrong — it’s not that I hate all, or even most, tourists. Many are certainly doing their best to be respectful of those around them. We’re all there to enjoy the bridge in one way or another, and everyone deserves a chance to gaze upon its glorious visage. There are just so many of us there, and on top of that, so few ways to get there. So it often ends up that while many Bay Area residents actually love the bridge, we’re forced to avoid it, whether because of time, logistics or the fact that we’d rather not be surrounded by thousands of photo-snapping folks on a given day.
For example, for Bay Area native and Golden Gate Bridge admirer Andrew Moudry, it’s primarily how much trouble it is to get to the bridge in the first place that keeps him from visiting in person.
“I hardly ever drive over — it’s a pain in the butt to get down to the Marina,” Moudry says. “And I try to avoid all things Marina unless I absolutely have to venture in that area.”
Instead, he admires the bridge from afar.
“I take time-lapse videos of the Golden Gate Bridge from my roof,” Moudry says. He’s lived in San Francisco for eight years, currently in a ground-floor micro-studio apartment. “I don’t have bridge views, so these time lapses are all I get in terms of day-to-day enjoyment of the bridge.”
But shouldn’t we, Bay Area locals, be able to enjoy our bridge — and not just from the driver’s seat in rush-hour traffic? We should be as comfortable hiking across its 1.2-mile span as we are on any urban hike. We shouldn’t feel relegated to gazing at its spires from a desk in an office building halfway across town (although I’d kill for an office with that kind of view).
It’s unfortunate, but tourists have ruined the Golden Gate Bridge for me and for many others. I’ll settle for peaceful views of it atop the Sunset’s hills, or from a ferry crisscrossing the San Francisco Bay.
Still, no matter how you feel about tourists on the Golden Gate Bridge, there’s no excuse for shooting blow darts at them, though. (Did you hear about that? Someone did that.) That’s just bad form. Just subtweet your complaints like the rest of us.
