From my dorm room in Berkeley you could see the Golden Gate Bridge. Actually, from where I slept, eight stories above a football-field-sized parking lot, you could see all kinds of things; Oakland, The Bay Bridge, Alcatraz, that Triangle Skyscraper (the Transamerica Pyramid), and Coit Tower.

Photo: California Coastal Records Project (if you\’ve never seen this site, go now, it\’s amazing).

All of these things (a living postcard from San Francisco) could be seen with a mere tug on the cord that commanded the south-facing curtains. But the Golden Gate Bridge was the only one that required risking my life.

To see the bridge, you had to first find a way to open the sliding window open all the way. The windows had been altered (a screw driven into the sliding track) so they\’d only open about eight inches. The reasons for this are obvious and sensible, if somewhat gruesome.

You can imagine what the reasons were.

But determination, especially of the youthful, reckless type, trumps every obstacle. A screw driver, employed in reverse, rendered a six-foot wide, screen-less opening. With that accomplished, the view of the golden, rounded \’W\’ shaped spans and the sun setting over the vast Pacific were just a few steps away.

The next thing was to breathe deep and wipe your hands dry. After that, you placed one foot on the window ledge, and wrapped the other through the post of the bunk-bed beside the window. Then, with an eye to the heavens and brief thoughts of your loved ones, you thrust your body fully outside of the building, your unwet hand firmly anchored on the wall.

At this point, you\’d be facing due west. You left foot and arm would stand atop a beautiful 300-foot column of air. And if the evening fog was a little late for dinner, you could see the great bridge, with the perfect, round sun falling behind it.

This position was not easily maintained, especially as many of the students who lived in the dorm-towers across from mine started pointing out their windows and laughing at me. Plus, the sunset was brief, and this particular life-risking activity was done with the goal of seeing both the sunset and the bridge, not one or the other.

The challenge, then, was how to get most of one\’s body-weight back inside the building. Shifting your center of gravity out there was easy, but shifting it back (especially when said center had nothing to rest on) was not.

Basically, this required an exertion of calculated, controlled strength that could only be inspired by downward glances and surprise gusts of wind. Inspiration, I\’m happy to say, was abundant.

Back in the room, now darkening under fog and night, a few wobbly steps provided some grounding. After that, it was a cinch to replace the window-jamming screw and forget the whole affair.

With a new appreciation for postcard photographers (if this is how they get their shots, they are undercharging) and an urge to get closer to the ground, I often descended to the seventh floor, where some of my friends lived.

Then we\’d hang out on the balcony that came off of the lounge. Extending out beyond the edge of the building, the balcony was safely fenced and a good place to relax at night. And once the fog retreated, it offered a clear view west, where from the comfort of a plastic lawn chair you could see, in flickering lights, the lolling reverse-arches of, what else, the Golden Gate Bridge.

Lesson learned: For every death-defying stunt it takes to see or do something really cool, there is a completely safe and easy alternative.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2004 at 6:19 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.