The Day the Bridge Flatlined

The Day the Bridge Flatlined

The following column is excerpted from Kevin Starr’s book, “Golden Gate, the Life and Times of America’s Greatest Bridge”:

On Sunday, May 24, 1987 . . .  as part, of the fiftieth anniversary celebration of its opening, the Bridge was closed to automobile traffic, and pedestrians were encouraged to walk across the Bridge from either the San Francisco or Marin side in the early morning hours, to be followed later that morning by a parade of vintage cars: all this reminiscent of the two-day opening ceremonies of May 1937. As it was, some of the zaniness of the 1937 walk reccurred. A young woman in a Stanford sweatshirt, for example, planned to somersault her way across the Bridge. Four young men walked across on stilts. One young man in leopard-print underpants, a San Franciscan most obvi­ously, stood in contrast to more modestly garbed Marin­ites; others wore signs around their necks indicating they had walked the Bridge as youngsters in 1937.

The pedestrian walk was scheduled to begin at 6:30 A.M., but by 5:30 A.M., the crowds on either side of the Bridge, swollen to unmanageability, spontaneously passed the re­straining barriers and began their walk, sweeping along with them the San Francisco and Marin County officials who were supposed to preside at mid-Bridge ceremonies, which were never held. At mid-Bridge the San Francisco and Marin phalanxes met. Instead of passing each other on either side of the roadway as planned, the two phalanxes ran into each other head-on and came to a standstill, and the crowds behind them were brought to a halt in an increas­ingly impacted environment. By certain later estimates, the gridlocked crowd numbered some 250,000 pedestrians, which translated to a weight of roughly 4,800 pounds per lineal foot, for a total estimated weight of 31 million pounds of humanity on the basis of 125 pounds per person. Fortunately, a lighter roadway installed the previous year had increased the capacity of the Bridge to 5,800 pounds per lineal foot over its previous 4,000-pound capacity. Thus the Bridge held, although it flattened out and lost its charac­teristic arch. Winds of thirty to thirty-five miles per hour, meanwhile, were producing a decided sway in the roadbed, unnerving the crowd.

It is virtually beyond comprehension to contemplate what might have occurred—possibly the greatest man­made accident in human history—had the Bridge not been strengthened the previous year. . . On the contrary, aside from one or two alcohol-fueled fistfights on the margins of the crowd, not at the center, people behaved beautifully, and a disaster was avoided.

With the exception of one confirmed heart attack and one slightly serious bicycle accident during the dispersion phase, there was next to no report of serious health crises that could have proven disastrous, given the inability of medics to penetrate the crowd. A total of twenty-two chil­dren were reported separated from their parents, fifteen of them recovered or accounted for by mid-day: a source of terrible stress for parents, most obviously, but no children were reported hurt during their separation ordeal. Mid­morning the long-delayed parade of vintage cars began, led off by the same 1937 burgundy Cadillac convertible that had carried San Francisco mayor Angelo Rossi and Cali­fornia governor Frank Merriam across the Bridge fifty years earlier, now conveying San Francisco mayor Dianne Feinstein and her husband Richard Blum. . .

Thus was the urban pedestrianism of the Golden Gate Bridge brought to unexpected extremes. No one—neither the District directors nor the staff of the Bridge, the Friends of the Golden Gate Bridge sponsoring the event, or for that matter the California Highway Patrol or the sheriffs of Marin and San Francisco counties—had come close to fore­casting the size of the crowd that would show up for the commemorative ceremonies. In a sense, the size of the crowd came as an unwelcome surprise, as did the million­-dollar debt incurred by the District for cleanup overtime and related expenses. Yet the overwhelming turnout, for all the problems it created, testified to the popularity of the Bridge as civic icon and pedestrian destination. Across one hectic, perilous, yet joyful morning, a million people celebrated their identification with a Bridge that conferred upon their metropolitan region its most compelling of urban achievement, its City Beautiful, shared and triumphant.

Just in time for holiday gifting, Mr. Starr’s book  is now available for purchase at the Ice House (780 Bridgeway) and at the Historical Society rooms in City Hall. You can also select from a line of Phil Frank greeting cards and – exclusively at the Ice House --history-related Christmas cards, the 2010 Arts Festival poster, and a new line of note cards featuring photographs of Sausalito and  particularly appealing shots of harbor seals and sea lions off our waterfront. 

Ray Strong’s famous 1934 painting of the Bridge under construction is reproduced in full color in Kevin Starr’s book.

Photo from Smithsonian American Art Museum, courtesy of Bloomsbury Press.



Walter Kuhlman: Sausalito Abstract Expressionist

Walter Kuhlman:  Sausalito Abstract Expressionist

by Peter Arnott

"I was there during the heyday -- when it was really jumping.  There were lots of poets, writers and painters. Abstract expressionism was gung-ho. We didn't care if we were famous.”  (From a Walter Kuhlman interview.)

When you’re a pioneer, sometimes you may not be aware of it.  All you know is it’s an exciting time, and you’re surrounded by exciting people -- creating what will be later acknowledged by art historians as the first specifically American art movement to achieve worldwide influence.

We’re in the 1940s and ‘50s, and there’s something new happening in New York and San Francisco that has turned the eyes of the Art World away from Paris.  Abstract Expressionism.  In this case, American Abstract Expressionism. 

 Just as, following WWI, avant-garde writers like Ernest Hemmingway and Ezra Pound flocked to Gertrude Stein’s salon in Paris to take part in a renaissance of American literature, so, following WWII, avant-garde artists flocked to San Francisco to take part in a renaissance of American art. 

One of those avant-garde artists is Walter Kuhlman, the son of Danish immigrants, who left his native Minnesota to enlist in the Navy, where he served as an illustrator in the Medical Corps, prompting a later art critic to observe that Kuhlman’s contact with the dead and wounded may be responsible for “the fearful shadow side of human nature” found in his paintings.

Now, out of the Navy, he moves to San Francisco, where he takes advantage of the G. I. Bill to join other veterans at the California School of Fine Art in what is considered “the golden era” of that institution.  Many students have already been to art school, and some, like Kuhlman, have already worked as professionals before the war.  For Kuhlman, the school is not so much about “instructors and students” as it is about “older artists and younger artists.”  And the thrill of -- together -- creating something new.

Kuhlman remembers... “It was not like the organized art schools today where everybody is degree-nutty.  In those days, the school was so free.  You’d come in in the mornings, paint until two o’clock, then go down to Bruno’s and drink wine.”  Kuhlman continues, “I never even got a certificate from the school.  I guess they gave them, but it didn’t matter.  We were painting.  We didn’t care if we were famous.  We were all out of the war -- and survived.  We didn’t look to tomorrow.  We just painted.”

It was during those years that Kuhlman built a house in Sausalito.  It’s still there, on Glen Court, still in the family.  He built it himself at a cost of $5,000.  In 1950, Kuhlman left the school to spend a year in Paris, after which he returned to Sausalito -- there to spend the next 58 years. 

In 1955, Kuhlman was the first artist to rent a space in the Industrial Center Building -- beginning a tradition that continues today.  You’re welcome to drop in to ICB Room 335, and visit the Kuhlman Gallery.

Over the years, Kuhlman has been honored with many distinguished awards. “But,” he says, in his quiet, self-effacing way, “you can’t find happiness in the minds of others.”

Today, examples of Kuhlman’s ground-breaking work hang in major museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the British Museum in London. 

And he has graced the faculties of several Bay Area institutions, such as Stanford University, Santa Clara University -- and Sonoma State University, where he taught for two decades. 

After a long and distinguished career, Walter Kuhlman died in March of 2009 at the age of 90.  During his lifetime, when asked to comment on his art, Kuhlman typically looks inward.  “I just get the canvas dirty,” he says, “and then dream into it.”  And he continues, “It’s the emergence of life ... living things coming out of a shadow ... I never know what happens.”

And finally, the confession of the truly talented: “How do I know?”  Walter Kuhlman says, “I just do it.”

Two Walter Kuhlman monotypes are included in the exhibit “Artistic Sausalito,”  along with original works by other artists from the 1940s and ’50s who gave Sausalito its reputation as an art colony.  The public is invited to view the exhibit on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 10 AM to 2 PM at the Historical Society Gallery, Sausalito City Hall, Second Floor.

Walter Kuhlman lived and worked in Sausalito for most of his long life.           

Photo courtesy of Sausalito Historical Society



Where is The Dock of The Bay?

Where is The Dock of The Bay?

By Larry Clinton, President, Sausalito Historical Society

It’s widely known that Otis Redding wrote his signature song, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” on a Sausalito houseboat, but which one?  Conflicting accounts by two historians have fueled a mini-controversy on the docks.  On the one hand, Derek Van Loan presents what he calls an eyewitness account in his book “Sausalito Waterfront Stories”:

In 1967 Otis Redding and his band and road crew were driving past the Heliport on U. S. 101 in a couple of dusty old black limos. The aged Caddies were so loaded with musicians, roadies and equipment that they’d scrape bottom on a shadow across the highway. Otis and his band were fed-up with touring; they’ d been on the road for months. For them life had become an uninspiring series of bland motels. And now they faced additional months of bookings in San Francisco.

As he drove, Otis just happened to look over and spot three large letters in the band practice room windows above the airplane hangers. “LSD farout!” Otis exclaimed, “Let’s go there.” And that’s how Otis Redding and his band came to live on a houseboat behind the Marin County Heliport.

It was a long, gray spring that year, and the modem, plastic houseboat they rented did little to dispel the damp, gloomy atmosphere that pervaded everything around them. The big Sikorsky commuter helicopter landed and took off throughout the day, marking the hours. The tang of jet fuel in the chilly air mingled with the muffled cacophony of several acid rock bands jamming simultaneously in practice rooms at the head of the dock.

At the other end of the dock lay a sunken bay freight boat, a relic of the 1920s, and the time before modern paved roads connected the delta cities around San Francisco Bay. The tired hull of the old vessel reclined in the mud, the salt tides washing in and out through her wooden bones. She was dark green, with flecks of white showing beneath her paint, which had cracked and flaked in the sun and salt air. The main deck was covered by a huge deckhouse and above that, on the upper deck, was a neat, glassed-in cabin, surmounted by a traditional pilothouse. The tall, skinny smokestack now served as a steel fireplace below. The signboard across the front of the pilothouse proclaimed “South Shore,” in genuine gold leaf letters… Aboard the old “South Shore” lived a collection of people, and some of them got to know Otis. It wasn’t long before Otis developed the habit of leaving his shiny, modern houseboat after he got up in the mid-morning, to saunter down to the old “South Shore.” And there he’d sit on the back deck in a creaky wicker chair and stare out over the bay as the salt water ebbed and flowed across the mud flats.

And, of course, as we all know, the song “Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay” tells the rest...

But longtime Chronicle music critic Joel Selvin tells the story somewhat differently in the following excerpt from his book “San Francisco: The Musical History Tour”:

THE DOCK OF THE BAY, Main Dock, Waldo Point Harbor, Sausalito

In August 1967, Otis Redding played a six-night engagement at San Francisco’s Basin Street West. When some female fans discovered his hotel room, Redding decided to move to a more remote location, according to road manager Earl “Speedo” Sims. They rented a houseboat on the main dock of the Sausalito houseboat community and holed up.

Sitting not actually on the dock, but inside the houseboat’s living room, Redding, under the spell of the Beatles’ recently released “Sergeant Pepper” album, strummed guitar, while Speedo slapped the tempo on his legs, sketching out a song. On his return to Memphis, Redding underwent surgery to remove polyps from his throat and for some time couldn’t speak above a whisper.

When he finally returned to the studio in November, he was taken with a burst of creative energy, and recorded more than two dozen new songs in a few weeks. The last song he cut was that piece that had begun to take shape on the Sausalito houseboat: “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay.”

The next day, he left for a Midwest swing starting in Cleveland. He left Cleveland for Madison, Wis., but never arrived. His twin-engine Beechcraft crashed into the chilly waters of Lake Monona, just short of his destination. When “The Dock of the Bay” was released in January, the record became the first No. 1 hit of his too-brief career.

The Sausalito Historical Society is attempting to resolve this controversy, in cooperation with the Marin History Museum’s upcoming Marin Rocks exhibition.  If you can shed any light on the matter, or know of any photographs of Otis Redding on a houseboat, please contact me at info@sausalitohistoricalsociety.org.

Otis Redding, 2,000 miles from home . . .