But from where I was standing, almost beneath it at the south end, even the mist couldn’t disguise the massiveness of its concrete piers and the taut strength of its cables. I tipped my head back and looked up the tower to where it disappeared into the drifting grayness, thinking about the other ways the bridge is deceptive. For one thing, its color isn’t gold, but rust red, reminiscent of dried blood. And though the bridge is a marvel of engineering, it is also plagued by maintenance problems that keep the Bridge District in constant danger of financial collapse. For a reputedly romantic structure, it has seen more than its fair share of tragedy: some eight hundred-odd lost souls have jumped to their deaths from its deck. Today I was there to try to find out if that figure should be raised by one. So far I’d met with little success. I was standing next to my car in the parking lot of Fort Point, a historic fortification at the mouth of the San Francisco Bay. Where the pavement stopped, the land fell away to jagged black rocks; waves smashed against them, sending up geysers of salty spray.
