January 29, 2026 • 50 mins
If you think the Golden Gate Bridge is named because of its color then you are wrong. That name proceeds the bridge by a long time. But that’s just one interesting fact about this amazing structure. Tune in today.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hanging Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck
and Jerry's hanging with us too, and it's Stuff you
should Know. And we're headed west and yeah that's so.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yeah. I mean we're recording on the Golden gate Bridge.
I guess this is like two weeks wow, two weeks
to the day, I think, what from our live show
in the city of San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
That's true because it's the fifteenth in our show's on
the twenty ninth.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
That's right on a rare Thursday, oh show. Yeah yeah.
Oh by the way too, I meant to mention, and
I hope this is okay with you. I got booked
to do a show on Friday, and I haven't mentioned
that to people, but on Friday, I will be performing
in the Hanging with Doctor z show.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Do you know Doctor Zayas?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah? Do you know about this?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
No? No, no, I don't know anything.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
This is the one in which comedian Dana gould Is.
He owns a professional like full blown doctor Zais costume
and he's been doing this for years and it's like
a talk show with him as the host. Is doctor Zaiahs.
So I'm on that and I'm very excited because not
only is Janet Varney and it co founder of sketch
(01:26):
Fest and dear friend, but Dave Foley. I get to
be on stage with a kid in the hall.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
What and man, that's going to be amazing.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, and the great Andy Daly. So if anyone wants
to see that on Friday night, just go to the
sketch Fest website and check it out. I think it's
at kind of one of the small comedy.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Clubs, do you know? Okay, so it's it a comedy club.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, it's one where I did movie Crush one year.
I can't remember the name of it.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Though, Well do you remember how to find your way
back there? Though?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I hope so.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I hope so too. That's awesome, man, congrats, and yes,
I second that everybody should go see it. You're in
San Francisco or not, because I'm sure that's gonna be awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, I mean you can come. I imagine you'll be
on a plane home huh yeah. Yeah all right, but
thank you.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
I appreciate the invite. I'll be there in spirit supporting you.
You text me immediately after and be like it was
a triumph or no, it won't be anything but a triumph.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Alright. So Golden Gate Bridge.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, that's why we started talking about California and San
Francisco in the first place. Because if you don't bother
to look at the titles of episodes and you just
let it roll one end of the other. That's what
we're talking about in this episode, the Golden Gate Bridge.
There's a pretty good chance you know what we're talking about.
It's often named as the most photographed bridge in the world.
(02:40):
I could believe that.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, it's my second favorite. What's your first Brooklyn bridge? Man?
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Okay, it's got to be to bb Okay, all right,
all right, what about you. I don't know. I don't
know that I have a favorite bridge. I kind of
like the ones that look like sailboats. There's a few
of those.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah, those are nice. A Tower Bridge in London is
also quite magnificent.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Sure, and then I'm gonna sound so obnoxious, But in Budapest.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
It's not obnoxious.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
No, just being like, what's your favorite bridge? Oh, mine's
in Budapest. No, but they have I think seven different
bridges and they went they did seven different designs for
all the bridges that go through the city and connect
Buddha to Pest, right, And it really is like a
city of amazing bridges. They're all just really well done
and they're just different. It's cool.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
I agree. I forgot about that well. Also, I mean,
since we're shouting out bridges, we can't not talk about
Pittsburgh because I went to a baseball game there in
that beautiful stadium and you get those beautiful bridges there.
It's lovely.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah, it's like eight Bridges Stadium. Yeah, I think so,
is that right?
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah? Okay, eight or twelve I think they call it
eight or twelve Bridges Stadium.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
That does.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
So back to the Golden Gate. It's also, Chuck, one
of the seven Wonders of the modern World.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah, And the American Society of Civil Engineers named it
one of the Bridges of the Millennium in two thousand.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
So it's a well regarded bridge. And if you've always
wondered or always thought like, hey, I guess the Golden
Gate bridge is called that because the I guess the
weird orange color is roughly golden. I don't know, you
would be like me probably like you, chuck, and that
would mean you were wrong.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
That's right, because Golden Gate very much predates the construction
of that bridge. And with that we come to our
first story.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Okay, I'm gonna make like a horse sound while you
tell the story, so this guy will be riding a horse.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Okay, you got two ads of coconuts and you're banging
them together. Eighteen forty six. This is the Mexican American wartime.
It's going on, and there's an army officer in the
United States named John Fremont who basically said without sounds like,
without even asking anyone, hey, California's independent from Mexico. At
one point he was crossing the San Francisco Bay there
(05:10):
from Sonoma to San Francisco to fight the Mexican army there.
And he named that boy, you're really doing a great job.
And he named that mile wide strait that connects the
bay to the ocean. What would that be chrysophil.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
A can't stop.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Oh no, there he goes off into the sunset. I
guess chrysophile which means Golden Gate. And later on, rather
than the Greek version, he went with the English and
that passage was called the Golden Gate.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
That's right. So this is the bridge over the Golden Gate.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Right, did you know that? No? Not, I was yesterday
years old, as they.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Say, yep. So yeah. And the Golden Gate in particular
is pretty neat, not just because it's like the it
connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean, but geographically
it's like three hundred feet deep right there, but on
the shelf in the Pacific side it's much shallower. And
then in the bay, so the bay is like an
(06:12):
average of fourteen feet deep or something crazy like that.
So it just suddenly goes like this huge depression. And
this is what they needed to cross, like a three
hundred foot depression through the Golden Gate with a bridge.
And I think the first person to ever suggest it
was a guy named Charles Crocker. And one of the
(06:32):
reasons they needed a bridge, Chuck in the first place,
is because if you ever look at a map of
San Francisco, it's actually a peninsula, so it's connected to
the south, to the rest of California, but there's a
lot of stuff to the north of that. To get
to the north, you have to cross the Golden Gate.
So people were like, we've got to get here to there.
You know, we like Marine County, We like Pedaluma. We
(06:54):
like to say Pedaluma at least. Yeah, Sacelito is another
fun one to say. So they started with fairies and
that worked just fine. But as more and more people
showed up, Tim Francisco was a magnet for immigrants, especially
after the Gold Rush of eighteen forty nine, they were like,
we might need something better than just fairies, like especially
if we want to run railroad cars.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, and Jack, that ferry was expensive, man. Yeah. They
were actually just like tanker boats, but they would double
as ferries and say, yeah, sure, we'll take you across.
It was two dollars ahead, which is almost seventy dollars today.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yeah, and you got range teams. Yeah, I saw seventy
seven dollars even.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Wow, that's even more outrageous.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
And they gave you saltines and grape kool aid. That
was the only food you had on.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Board, just like Southern Baptist Communion.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
That's what I had in nursery school. It's actually a
winning combination.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
And that was pretty good, especially if you're in church
and you're like hard up for snacks.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So oh, there was finally one called up the Princess.
It was a side wheel paddle wheel steamer. That was
the first official ferry that happened at eighteen sixty eight.
But that guy Charles Crocker, all the way back in
eighteen seventy two, he said, we need a bridge. And
the reason why he said we need a bridge is
because he was a railroad guy, and he's like, we
need to get railroads up there. We need to get people,
(08:17):
we need to move lumber, we need to do all
sorts of cool stuff. So let's let's get a bridge, guys.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah, And people are like, there's no way. That's two miles.
No one's ever built a suspension bridge that long. And
in nineteen sixteen there was a San Francisco Sun journalist
who used to study engineering named James Wilkins. He said,
now I think we can build a suspension bridge. It'll
be three thousand feet and it'll cost in those days
(08:43):
dollars one hundred million dollars, which is almost I'm sorry,
it's more than three billion today. So everyone said that's
probably not going to happen either. So eventually it took
a city engineer named Michael O'Shaughnessy to be on the
lookout to say, we do need a bridge, but we
got to get this cost lower. Enlisted a guy in
(09:03):
nineteen twenty one from Chicago name an engineer named Joseph Strauss,
who said, here's what we do. Everyone. It is possible,
but it can't be a straight suspension bridge all the
way over, and it can't be just a cantilevered bridge.
The suspension will be too flexible and FLEXI with those wins,
and the cantilever would be way too heavy. So if
(09:24):
we do a combination of the two, I think that's
the winning idea, and it'll cost you only seventeen million dollars.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah, that was much more in line with what the
city engineer knew that the city of San Francisco would
be willing to pay for something like that, right right, Yeah.
Joseph Strauss, he became the central figure of the Golden
gate Bridge. He's often credited to the man who built
the Golden gate Bridge. That's a genuinely unfair thing to say,
because so many people contributed so much to it. But
(09:55):
he was he was not a shy person. He could
work with just about anybody. He knew how to work
the system, and he was not a self promoter, but
he definitely was after the acclaim of being the man
who built the Golden Gate Bridge. So just kind of
put that in your in your pipe for later.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Right, don't smoke it yet though, right.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
No, no, don't don't spark it. But he enlisted a
guy named Charles Ellis, who is like the I don't
know how you would describe him. I can't think of
an analogous movie character, but I feel like we can
get him across a little bit. He was obsessed with
making sure that this bridge was not going to collapse.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yeah, I would describe him as a math whiz. He
was the guy.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I think we did the when we did the New
York Subways episode, we talked about the tunnels that went
under the Hudson River.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
M hmm.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
He was a guy that came up with that plan.
And so that's a pretty good dude to get if
you're trying to build a bridge that no one thought
could be built at the time, right, like super super
math guy. Just keep math in your head, because, as
we'll see, math would end up being his undoing.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, but he was not after a claim He did
not I get the impression necessarily know how to work
with everybody or work the system. He just wanted to
do his math stuff, right.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
So he was a good guy to have in that sense.
And one of the reasons why he was so good
is because the design process was so long. At one point,
as we'll see, they just completely scrapped Strauss's idea and
started over.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Financing was also a thing. I mean, Strauss had gotten
it down to an estimate of seventeen million, and I'm
sure anybody who was paying any attention was like, we
should plan on probably at least double that, just about right. Yeah.
But the state was interested enough that in nineteen twenty
three they passed the Golden gate Bridge and Highway District
Act of California, which basically said to the people in
(11:49):
the surrounding twenty one counties, Hey, you guys want to
get in on this and basically vote for a tax
district that can create debt to borrow money basically again
in Star counties. What do you think?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah? And they said, well, what does that mean. That
sounds weird And they said, well, it means that all
the businesses and all your homes in your county are
going to be put up as collateral jointly against that loan.
And surprisingly, maybe six out of the twenty one county
said we're in. We see this progress as something that
we need. As far as the remaining counties that weren't
(12:23):
into it, you know, some of the obvious reasons is
they just didn't want to do that. A so I'm
worried about the cost overruns and like, hey, this isn't
even going to be enough. Other people didn't. You know,
this was the early nineteen twenties, so it was still
you know, kind of a I mean it was a
bustling city for nineteen twenties, but there were areas of
(12:43):
rural you know, ruralness sure across the other side, and
like they were like we don't want this bridge, Like
we've got livestock over here and we're cutting down our lumber.
And even back then they had conservation this agitating against
stuff like this. Notably the Sierra Club was like, we
(13:05):
don't want a bridge in that beautiful bay. And there
were a lot of other people that came out with
a lot of good reasons to bring up lawsuits, like
you know, earthquakes. It was one in nineteen oh six.
That was recent enough to where like what about this
earthquake thing, Like, what if that happens, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
The first big one. Yeah, shippers were like, well, you know,
we can make it through the Golden Gate of the
Pacific pretty easy. Right now, we're a little worried that
just building this bridge is going to hamper our ability
to make mad cash. The Department of War, which had
a heavy presence in that area, it was like, look,
we run like really important warships in and out of
(13:43):
this harbor. We're worried that this bridge is going to
block our progress. But then also we're worried that it's
going to become a real target for saboteurs and that
they will blow up the bridge and block the harbor
with the debris. And then the Southern Pacific Railroads stepped
up and said, we run the ferries, like we're going
to lose a bunch of money if you guys build
(14:04):
a bridge. So all these people together were either parties
to or had their own lawsuits against the bridge authority
saying like no, you can, you can't do this, And
against all of those odds, the people in favor of
the bridge managed to overcome that.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yeah, and before we break, I do want to mention
before we get some email, we mentioned Apartment of War
not in bended knee to Pete Hegseth. That was the
original name that later became the Department of Defense.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, I forgot that, which and.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Then all again now yeah, is now to the tune
of what I just read was going to cost one
hundred and twenty five million dollars to change that name
back to the Department of War.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
So another one hundred and twenty five to change it
back to the Defense Department again eventually.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Probably, So, so I just want to point that out.
Let's take a break and we'll be right back. So
(15:16):
the first design, this hybrid design was pretty ugly. There.
It was a critic that said it looked like an
upside down rat trap. So they said, all right, we
got to redesign this thing because it's got to look good.
Ellis gets together with consulting engineers leon I guess that
would be moisseyf and oh Aman, and they got together
with Strauss and they said, all right, let's go back
(15:38):
to this old idea, but a new design of a
full suspension bridge. Yeah, the longest one ever and it'll
end up being the tallest one ever at the time
at least, because you know, all the winds in the
water and the boats and everything, this thing needed to
be tall and super long.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah, and it also needed to be tall because the
angle of the cables to hold up such a long
deck had to come down at a crazy angle. Yeah,
which meant that those towers had to be really tall.
So this is going to be the tallest bridge in
the world, the longest suspension bridge in the world. And
they're like, let's do that, Let's make the impossible happen.
And it's fourth pointing out chuck, Like, these guys aren't
(16:17):
using CAD, they're not using any sort of computer. They
do not exist yet. They're not using calculators. They're doing
all of these calculations by hand, using their noodles, paper rules,
slide rules, pencils, Like, that's how this bridge was designed.
That's how they calculated the stresses on it. That's how
they figured out how to engineer it, all by hand
(16:39):
and using their heads.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yeah, amazing. They did all kinds of testing, obviously some
pretty impressive stuff. As you'll see, they create a model
that was one fifty six scale took it to Princeton
University there in New Jersey and did a scale down
equivalent of one hundred and twenty million pounds of vertical
load to tests to make sure those towers could take
(17:02):
that past that test. And like I said, there was
so much math going on. Eventually Strauss got irritated. So
the guy Ellis that they hired because he was great
at math, got fired because the math was so irritating
to Strauss.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah. Ellis later recorded that Strauss said that the structure
was nothing unusual and didn't require the time that Ellis
thought necessary for it. Oh man, I also saw elsewhere
somebody say that Strauss was envious or resentful of I
guess the respect that Ellis got from the board whenever
he went and spoke to them.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
I could see that.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
So yeah, this is And I also think that Strauss
was getting leaned on. He was the one that was
getting pressured to meet the time, and Ellis was like, no,
it's going to take six months more than that. So
finally Strauss fires Ellis in the most like cowardly way
a person can. He forces him to take vacation, and
then before his vacation's over, he's ends him a telegram
(18:01):
saying you're fired.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah, that's pretty bad. Ellis didn't receive a lot of
credit at the time, and in fact, he didn't get
a lot of credit until after he passed away in
nineteen forty nine. So we're taking our hat off to you,
mister Ellis, for your great work and your great math,
because we are both math whizzes ourselves, and we have
a lot of respect for maths.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
That's right. He also he didn't have anything to do.
He couldn't really find much work because this was during
the depression and he was fired. He went back and
he went over all the figures again, all of the
calculations to make sure they were right. He was spending
like seventy hours a week and it took it months. Geez.
And he did. And he was like, Yep, this is
going to work, even though no one was listening to him,
(18:44):
he wasn't being paid for it. He just wanted to
make sure that this thing was going to work.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
That's great. So in nineteen twenty eight, they kind of
mired their way through, or got their way through, the
mire of the legal activity and all the protests and everything.
The state government California said the Golden Gate Bridge and
Highway District is now a thing. They're going to pull
off every facet of this build. And in November nineteen
(19:08):
thirty the district issued thirty five million dollars in bonds
to finance this thing, which was a problem at the
time though, because it was during the Great Depression, obviously,
and they couldn't find any buyers for these bonds, and
all these legal matters were scaring people away, and so
they turned to kind of one of the heroes of
this whole thing in nineteen thirty two, a guy named
(19:31):
Amadio Giannini, the president of Bank of America.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Yeah, one of the most revered and respected banks in
the world. Everyone loves Bank of America. They're basically a
mascot here in the US, that's right.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
And he was also just a California hero. He kind
of kickstarted the Hollywood movie industry, the California wine industry.
So he was a guy to go to and he
was like, I got you. I got a big room
with six million dollars over here, and I'll buy those
bonds and you can get started on your project.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah, which is pretty cool. And he is one of
the heroes for sure, so they got started. They started
during the depression, as we saw, and on the one hand,
that meant financing it was difficult. On the other hand,
it meant that they had a huge pool of laborers
to tack because there are a lot of out of
work people. So they got everyone they needed basically immediately
(20:24):
to get started. It started on January fifth, nineteen thirty three.
And there are a lot of issues that construction face
that made this a unique construction job. Every day, four
times a day, so two times in and two times out.
The tide brings in and takes out three hundred and
ninety billion gallons of water through the Golden Gate. While
(20:46):
these guys are trying to build their bridge. There's tons
of fog, there's a lot of storms, there's high winds.
It was not just like a walk in the park
like apparently the Bay Bridge was to build.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Yeah, I mean apparently the Baybridge is more impressive in
some ways and was built and finished before, but it
didn't get nearly the press because it was just an
easier job overall.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Right, It's like eight miles long, which is the exact
distance from downtown Detroit to Eminem's house, and.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
I didn't see that coming when you said Detroit, I
didn't even see it coming. Nice work, thanks, all right.
So it's a difficult job, super super hard because of
the terrain and the water and the wind and the
fog and everything going on. The north tower was built
on the Marin County side on the coastline there into
a very strong layer of basalt and sandstone, and that's great.
(21:40):
So they were like, the north side is fine because
this stuff is very, very sturdy to build into. The
south tower was about one thousand feet off shore and
a bed of serpentine rock, and they went, this side
is a little trickier, so we're gonna have to take
our time a little more.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yeah. They got this guy named Andrew C. Lawson. He's
a great example of how many people were thoroughly involved
in this because every person you mentioned in this story,
just imagine there's dozens or maybe hundreds of people working
beneath them in coordination with that person. He was a
geologist and he basically took to test the bedrock. He
(22:19):
I'm not exactly sure how he did it, but he
put the equivalent of a railroad box car fully loaded
that amount of weight and force onto a twenty square
inch area and it held up fine. Something it is.
I could not find out how he did that exactly.
It's just such a spectacular way to put it that
(22:39):
I guess everyone's like, no one cares what actually happened.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Yeah, just tell me he did it.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
And then he put on an old timey diving suit
and diving bell and went down to the bedrock and
hit it with a hammer. And apparently if it makes
this sound like a dinging sound, that's what you're looking for,
because not only is it strong, but it's also flexible,
which is going to come in handy whenever the San
Andreas gives California the big one, the eight point six
(23:06):
magnitude earthquake that everyone says is inevitably coming someday.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Yeah, for sure. In order to ensure that, you know, stability,
they had workers dive ninety feet down to put explosives
down to blast out even more rock so they could
go even deeper. They had to get rid of those
fragments to even get out to that tower. You know,
they have all these materials, so a lot of big
construction like this is constructing things so you can do
(23:34):
the construction. And that was the case here. So they
had to build a road basically on a trestle just
to get out to that tower, and then they had
to protect this thing from like being bumped into by
a ship.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah. If you look at the concrete foundations that the
towers are built on, you'll notice that they're like oval
and those were designed to basically act as fenders, kind
of like if you play bumper bowling. Okay, it's basically
like that, and imagine the bowling ball is a ship
that's being captained by somebody who's not paying attention. Huh,
(24:10):
probably on his phone. Yeah, yeah, and they will hit
that fender, the bumper, and it will keep them from
running into the actual tower itself, and because of the
oval shape, hopefully kind of push the ship away from
the fender itself.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah. Well, the captain says, what was that? Yeah, they weren't.
I think they said it looked like a giant bathtub
is what they referred to it. But you know, they
filled that thing once it was peaking above the surface,
partially with concrete, pumped out the water, reinforced it with steel,
more concrete, and all of a sudden, you've got a
(24:48):
protected tower with that that Billiard's bumper bowl. Bumper bowl?
Is that what you called it?
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Bumper bowling?
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Oh okay, I thought you were talking about like bumper.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
No, no, no, bumper bowling where they put those guard rails down
in the gutters.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, we went bowling last week and Ruby still uses those.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
I do too. Sometimes I can still manage to miss
pins bumper bowling.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
But oh okay, I thought you might just roll a
gutter balls like man who can't.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
No, I think even bumper bowling, I can miss the pins. Still.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
I did the usual. I know I've mentioned this before,
but with bowling usually for and I think the other
day I hit like a like a one forty and
then like a seventy.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
I don't remember. Are those good?
Speaker 1 (25:34):
I mean for someone who doesn't bowl much, I feel
like is a pretty strong number.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Is that, dude? Or heyesus level good?
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (25:40):
No?
Speaker 1 (25:41):
No, No, like three hundred is a perfect game. Uh,
But I mean one forty means you've hit plenty of
strikes and spares and probably had a good last frame out.
I don't know if that's what they call it, but
seventy is bad. My whole point was, though, is I'm
good for one game? And then my my game really
drops off.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Okay, well, were you junk by the second game?
Speaker 1 (26:00):
No, no, no, no, no, I had I had but
one beer, a PBR draft. It was delicious.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Okay, yeah, sometimes those are the best ones, that really
crowdy ones.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
I don't do that much anymore, but it was super
refreshing and delicious.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Great.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Yeah, that's Chuck goes bowling.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Yeah and PBR uh huh. So you want to take
a break.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Oh yeah, yeah, we're there already. Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Okay, so Chuck, they've got the foundation poured. That's a
(26:49):
nice fender a bumper around the towers. Apparently, once they
got that foundation done, they erected the South Tower, which
was the more difficult of the two towers, the one
closest to San Francisco. They erected it in like six months,
which is really amazing, especially as you find like that
added up. That was not an anomaly for this project,
that kept like hitting milestones ahead of time, and that
(27:13):
used quite a bit of steel thanks to Bethlehem Steel
Corporation of Pennsylvania. And as we know from our Christmas episode,
the reason it is Bethlehem, Pennsylvania is thanks to our
Moravian friends who moved there in the eighteenth cents.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Right New Jersey chips into gott gotta shout out New
Jersey for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
I don't believe the Moravians had much to do with
naming New Jersey.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
No, no, no, But as far as the steel goes.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Okay, yes, And so Bethlehem Steel provided forty four thousand
tons of steel for each tower. That was each tower,
and this is not like a quick thing. They prefabricated them,
put them on a barge, and then sent them to
San Francisco, down the East coast, passed Florida, through the
Panama Canal, and then up to San Francisco. That's how
(27:57):
every single piece of steel, fabricated steel made its way
to the Golden Gate project.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yeah, that's right, via the Panama Canal. They get there,
they obviously use these giant cranes to lit these steel
sections into place and start kind of just putting this
thing together like a kit. At this point, and at
this point they haven't even you know. Eventually they had
temporary elevators built so people could get up and down quicker.
But before that it would take a worker twenty minutes
(28:24):
just to climb a ladder. I can't imagine how terrifying
that would be just to be climbing a ladder that high,
that takes twenty minutes to climb. But that's how it
got to the top. And then we get to the color.
Like we mentioned before, it's not named Golden gate Bridge
because of the color, because it's really not golden in color.
(28:45):
It got there, like we said, prefab then it was
painted with an orange just red lead primer just to
kind of make sure it made the journey there okay,
without getting rusted out. And once it got there, consulting
architect Irving Morrow said, man, that looks pretty darn good. Everybody,
what do you think? And everyone went bully bully, And
(29:07):
so they started searching for sort of related colors and
ended up landing on what is now known is Golden
gate Bridge International. Orange.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
I would have kept my mouth shup, but I would
have been looking around, like you guys think that looks good.
That's the color we're going.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
To paint the mean to green personally, but.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Okay. So one of the things that is great about
that particular color orange, And I think one of the
reasons people said bully for it was because it didn't.
It didn't well, it harmonized with the surrounding area. It's nice,
hilly shrubby it like. It was a good choice for
sure for that, and I think it also kind of
placated a lot of people too there like that actually
(29:48):
kind of goes with everything. It doesn't stick out like
a sore thumb. So it was a good idea, and
that International orange is still used today. You can thank
International orange for the color of your life vest if
it's orange.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
That's right. That is just regular International orange. The golden
gate bridge International orange is a little different. It's like
a variation on that, but like you said, it blended
in well. And it also did you know, the job
that it was really supposed to do was stand out
for ships and boats there in the fog. Rejected colors
included silver, black, and then black and yellow, which was
(30:24):
suggested by the US Navy, like you know, stripe, black
and yellow, because that was the best color for visibility
to them.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
It's the best color for Christian metal too.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
That's right. It's funny because I can that striper. This
stuff looks so good, but I can't picture a bridge
in yellow and black stripe. It just looks too safety industrial,
you know, or cliffs nose? Yeah, yeah, true.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Didn't the dude, the drummer from Striper have black and
yellow striped drum sticks? Even?
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I think he had a black and yellow striped everything,
if you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Oh, I see he had a black and yellow stripe Gnomon.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Let's keep going, boy, that's good, all right? So Marrow
we mentioned Irving Morrow. He's the consulting architect who said, like,
I'd like this color. He also obviously played a part
in a lot of the aesthetic aesthetic aesthetic decisions. That's tough,
good band name, but also bad esthetic. No one could
ever say it, are you going to see tonight? The
aesthetic decisions. One of the things that he designed aesthetically
(31:35):
was to make it look a little taller. Was those
tower panels decrease in size from bottom to top. Pretty
good idea, yep.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
And the well I guess Lawson was like, let's do this,
and let's add a little bit of this and maybe
put bows on the top kind of thing. Strauss, who
again is the man at the center of all of this,
he was way ahead of his time as far as
safety goes. Apparently, the Golden Project was the first one
that required hard hats on site, which is not fairly ubiquitous.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah, good little fact.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Yeah. And then he also created a safety net that
was movable, so I think the people who were in
the highest risk of falling to their deaths got to
use the safety net while they were up their work.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah, and use it they did, because that thing ended
up saving the lives of nineteen construction workers. They became
known that those nineteen became known as the Halfway to
Hell Club, which is pretty funny in a way. But
there were some deaths. In February thirty seven, scaffolding collapsed
due to an accident, thirteen men on it. The net failed,
(32:43):
and ten of them died. But in the end, eleven
people died from this project, which is pretty good. I mean,
it's awful that eleven people died. But for the time,
they would say, like for every million dollars of a project,
you can expect one death, And this thing came in
at like thirty five million or so, so they expected,
(33:05):
you know, thirty to forty deaths and there were only eleven.
So that was that was I guess a win for
safety for the time at least.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Yeah, for sure, I find that a really strange rule
of thumb. For every million spent, you can expect to death. Like,
I guess what that's based on is just the complexity
increases by the price. I may're the height something.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Yeah, probably just that means it's it's big and difficult
and complex. I think you're right, But it's definitely the
only thing the way to calculate something, it really is.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
So, yeah, there's thirty four people dead in one person's like,
how much is this bridge going cost?
Speaker 1 (33:42):
You?
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Like thirty five? And you're in.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
There's cost overruns and you know what that means.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
So they completed the towers, both towers in nineteen thirty five.
Remember they started this whole thing. I think they started
building that temporary roadway to the first foundation in nineteen
thirty one. They're moving along, and after the towers would complete,
it was time to create those four iconic cables that
(34:09):
are the actual things that hold up the road deck.
The bridge itself. The point of the bridge is held
up by these cables. And if you see one of
those cables in person, you will find that it is
three feet one meter thirty six inches. Let's see, do
it three hundred centimeters in. Let's see, it would be
(34:32):
a third of a decameter in width or in diameter,
and it's actually made of twenty five thousand wires. Each
of those cables are all twisted together.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Yeah, and to get that done, they hired John A.
Roebling's son's company is the name of the company, and
they had worked on the Brooklyn Bridge, so they were
obviously great people to call for that. But like you said,
I think you said it was completed ahead of schedule.
This was April nineteenth, nineteen thirty seven, about a million
three under the thirty five million dollar budget. Just a
(35:09):
little housekeeping here. It's one point seven miles long, ninety
feet wide, holds six lanes of traffic, two sidewalks, seven
hundred and forty six foot high towers, with the main
span between them being forty two hundred feet and at
his midpoint the span hangs two hundred and sixty five
feet above the average height of the water below. And
(35:30):
people were really excited to get on this thing.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
They were an opening day. The first day they let
pedestrians across, the next day was cars, and at the
grand opening. I think this kind of gets across the
type of person Joseph strausswa he read a poem that
he wrote for the day, and he was a poet,
so it's not bad. I like the rhythm of it.
The meter sure is that correct?
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Yeah? I think so.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
I would say go look it up and read it yourself.
I'm not going to read it. But it's called the
Mighty Task is done by Joseph Strauss. The thing that
bothers me, Aside from a couple of clunky lines, he
says essentially like that all the people who are involved
of this are glorified and that no selfish urge stains
(36:17):
its life, no envy, greed, intrigue or strife. And I'm like, dude,
he specifically didn't mention Ellis, Charles Ellis at this whole thing,
and then he goes to the he has the audacity
to say that that's not being done here at this
grand ceremony.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah, and they built a Trellis so you had a
word there in the bag.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
That's right, good point, Chuck Man.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
I don't know about Strauss, now, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
He's not really talked about like that from what I
can tell, I just kind of put this together from
different different places. But there's a there's a bronze statue
of him in Golden Gate Park, I think, and there's
books about him and his amazing feet, And it's just
I don't like people like that who take full credit
for something that yeah, hundreds or thousands of people have
(37:08):
done and that they did, like backbiting along the way
with it. It's just I don't like people like that.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
I'm with you. He actually had a Trellis line. He
was like, what rhymes with trellis? Hmm? I got nothing?
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah, he scratched it out.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Like Ellis is outside the window holding up a sign.
The math checks out.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
I saw that. No one can say for certain whether
Ellis ever saw the Golden Gate Bridge himself. I'm sure
sure that he went and saw it at some point,
because he died decade or two, yeah, a good decade
after it opened, So I would guess unless he had
like a horrible aversion at just the thought of the bridge,
(37:48):
I'll bet he went and visited it.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Yeah, I bet you're right. So we can compare it
to other suspension bridges in a few ways, because I
think that's fairly interesting. It's got a lighter roadway than most,
it does not have train tracks on it, but it
seems like that was one of the original ideas, is
they wanted a train to be able to run across
that thing. But they realized that the winds were a
(38:12):
real problem in nineteen forty after the to Come Up
Narrows Bridge disaster, and they saw those things in forty
mile an hour winds twisting around. They're like, we need
to cause we get winds up to like seventy five
miles an hour, so we need to stiffen this thing up.
So they added horizontal trusses to stiffen the structure against twisting,
and that's what brought the total weight of the deck
(38:34):
too high, basically to where they could not end up
putting railroad tracks down.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
No, like they were close to the limit of it.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
I guess right, yeah, I couldn't do it, Okay.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
So the Golden Gate it was the longest suspension bridge
until nineteen sixty four when the Arizona Narrows took over
that for a while. And like we said, there's Golden
Gate Park that predates the bridge, but Golden Gate National
Record Creation Area was created on either side of the
bridge after the bridge was already around for a while,
(39:07):
and there's some pretty neat things about it. One of
the things we remember, we talked about how people were
worried about earthquakes. Well, it actually survived the Loma Prieta earthquake,
the nineteen eighty nine earthquake that took place when the
A's and the Giants were playing each other in the
World Series and just killed a lot of people. The
(39:27):
Bay Bridge apparently a section of that collapsed and the
Golden Gate survived with no damage whatsoever from when I
could tell her, very little of it.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Yeah, pretty good there. And this is something I heard
early on in my life was that the Golden Gate
Bridge basically is in constant paint mode basically, so like
it's always being painted apparently, like it takes so long
to paint and sort of you know, take care of
the corrosion because of all that salty fog and salty
(39:58):
air and water. Right, just it never stops. It's not like,
all right, we're done and we're going to take a
few months off. It's continuously being kept up.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Yeah. And one other thing about the earthquake thing, they
somebody at some point figured out that the San Andreas
could produce at most of eight point six magnitude earthquake,
and then they went and figured out that the Golden
Gate would probably not be able to withstand that. So
they started, I think back in well after the Loma
Prieta earthquake in nineteen eighty nine, they started a bit
(40:27):
of a retro fit to try to make it earthquake
proof up to eight point six magnitude. And one of
the things that they were having to shore up Chuck
was that they didn't bolt the towers to the foundation
because they're like, these are so heavy, we don't even
need to waste the time or money on bolts. And
an eight point six earthquake, they realized if you stay
in stiffly with your leg stiff and then you kind
(40:48):
of fall to the side and one of your feet
comes off the ground. When you go back to center again,
your feet comes down, and imagine one of the towers
doing that when it comes back down on that foundation.
They're like, that foundation is not going to hold that up. Yeah,
so that's what they're trying to retrofit. Now.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Yeah, that's a big footstomp, is what they said for sure.
So we have to close now with some sort of
darker stuff because the Golden Gate bridge, if it's known for.
It's known for many things, but one thing it's very
much known for is that there have been many many
suicides attempted and completed over the years. They averaged about
(41:25):
twenty per year for a very long time. Hundreds of
others had been stopped by obviously volunteers that are stationed
there to watch for this sort of thing. Bridge workers, cops,
sometimes just random people like you see in a movie.
And they took a very long time to eventually get
a safety net, even though it was possible. They really
(41:48):
dragged their feet getting that thing up, didn't they.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Yeah. I saw that there was an opposition to it
that included it will be ugly.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Oh god, so.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Every I think since the first guy who died by
suicide's name was Harold Waber. He was walking on the
bridge all the way back, just like a few months
after it opened, and he was walking with a friend.
He said, this is as far as I go, and
he became the first person to jump to his death
from the bridge. That was in nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Yeah, what a thing, What a last line, you know?
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, imagine being that friend and being like wait what
and then yeah, yeah, I can't imagine that since then
at least two thousand people, maybe a little more, probably more,
because I think they assume that there's plenty of people
who have jumped and their bodies were never found. But
at least two thousand confirmed people have jumped to their
deaths from the Golden gate Bridge. And in nineteen ninety five,
(42:43):
the California Highway Patrol, which had been keeping an official count,
stop their official count at nine hundred and ninety seven
because they were worried that there was going to be
a rash of suicides to become the one thousandth person
to die by suicide by jumping off the Golden gate Bridge.
So officially the count's nine and ninety seven, but I
think most credible sources put it at over two thousand.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Now, yeah, and what a thing to think about, What
an awful thing to consider. But like, thank god they
thought of something like that, because they're.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Probably right, you know what the security net.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
No, the stopping the public count, because oh yeah, you know,
I would never have thought of something like that, So
I'm glad they thought of that. There was a really,
I don't know what to call it, interesting and awful
documentary from two thousand and six called the bridge. I
saw it. I'm not sure did you see that one? Yeah,
(43:39):
there's a lot to it. It was you know, the
point was to drive awareness about this and about suicide
and suicide prevention. But it was very controversial in that
they captured footage. They had cameras you know, trained on
the bridge from the mountains nearby, and they captured footage
of twenty three suicides, including a survivor, and they you know,
filmed family members and interviewed one about their loved ones.
(44:03):
It's very moving and upsetting documentary from when did I say,
two thousand and six?
Speaker 2 (44:09):
Yeah, it is so Yeah. That definitely raised public awareness
and kind of I think amplified the public outcry about
this and made people be like, wait, we probably should
do something about this, because twenty to thirty people a
year were taking their own lives at this time. Right.
They finally, finally in twoenty the beginning of twenty twenty four,
(44:31):
they finished putting up these safety nets essentially that stick
out from the side of the bridge, so that if
you jump off the side of the bridge, you're going
to land in the steel net. The whole thing costs
two hundred and twenty four million dollars and completed suicides
dropped by seventy three percent. Yeah, after they were installed.
And even more amazing than that, I think there were
(44:52):
two hundred attempts and thirty completed suicides a year on
average after the nets were installed. That fell to one
hundred and thirty two and eight in twenty twenty four,
and there were no suicides in the last seven months
of twenty twenty five. So these nets are actually preventing
people from completing suicide and also deterring people from attempting
suicide there.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Yeah, and you know, they've done studies where they've interviewed
people who did survive. Most of them don't ever try again,
which is like very encouraging to know. I think there
was a study in the nineteen seventies by a guy
named Richard Sidon, and he followed up on five hundred
and fifteen people who had been stopped These aren't people
(45:33):
who jumped and survived, but they were stopped from jumping
in the thirty five years prior to the study, and
he found that only thirty five of the five point
fifteen went on to die by suicide. So that's really
great to know that if you can be an EMT
or a police officer or a random passer by who
can get someone out of that dire situation that there's
(45:54):
a very very good chance that will be not something
they go on to complete.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Yeah, and you mentioned those volunteers that are stationed along
the bridge just for that very purpose. I would wager
that there's at least one stuff you should know a
listener who does that, and I would love to hear
from them.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
I bet you're right. And I hope someone comes to
our live show and stands up at the end and
tells everybody that they do that. I bet you that happens.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Yeah, they will get thunderous applause. That's right. I feel
like we should end on a high note. And the
high note is the Golden Gate Bridge was where James
Bond successfully defeated Christopher Walkin saving Tanya Roberts in The Bargain.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
That's right of you to a kill.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Probably the best bomb movie ever.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Hmmm, interesting, All right.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
I mean that was the one I grew up on,
so that's probably why I like that. But there's no
kid who grew up on like The Living Daylights and
was like, that's.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
The good stuff.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Chuck said, good stuff, which is where I was trying
to push him because that unlocks the listener mail.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
All right, this is a chance to plug friends of
the show here. Hey, guys, just finished the episode on
the radio, the national radio Quiet Zone. Found it very
fascinating and by the way, we got a few emails
from people pointing this out. I want to reach out
with a recommendation of one of the McElroy pods. The
maclroy brothers, Justin Griffin and Travis McElroy have long done
(47:24):
my brother, my brother and me and I've known those
guys for a long time. Super cool dudes. And then
they do a show with their dad called The adventure Zone,
which is where they play D and D and that's
become hugely popular.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
That's awesome, man, Yeah, it's super cool.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
But the second season of Adventure Zone is called Amnesty,
and it is well, it's a tabletop role playing game,
so I don't know if it's always D and D,
but Griffin has said it in the Green Bank area,
so the folks in that area that it attracts and
the lack of communication is a plot device and really
drives a story. It's one of my favorites that they've done,
(47:59):
I hold stuff you dealing with my heart. Thanks for
doing what you do. And ps, I loved hearing a
few of the macarroys on Movie Crush. I loved hearing
josh on Behind the Bastards and so on all of
my favorite podcasters. Crossing paths now and then really drives
those parasocial bonds. So go listen to josh on Behind
the Bastards your past episodes. You're on a couple of times, right.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
Yes, I was, and on Daily Zeitgeist. No, I was
on Behind the Bastards once. I was on Daily's Seikeist.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
A couple of times, Zeitgeist a couple of times. And
then I had Griffin on Movie Crush in his favorite movie,
which he claims is not his favorite movie only but
also the best movie was groundhog Day.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
It is a good movie.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
And I had Justin on and Justin I think I
can remember every single guest in their movie. Still his
was with Nail and.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
I I've never seen that. Isn't that a Morrisey album?
Speaker 1 (48:54):
I don't know, but it's a British independent film, so
it wouldn't surprise me.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
This is Vauxhall and I okay with.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Neil and I Richard D. Grant. It's it's really good.
I think you and Yumi would both like it.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
All right, we'll watch it then, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
It's from like the indie movie revolution of the nineties
and from England, and it's really really great.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
You know. I think I was talking smack not too
long ago about pt Anderson. I don't know if it
was on the podcast or not, and that I basically
hadn't liked anything at his since Boogie Knights, Okay, maybe Magnolia, Okay.
Then I saw One Battle after Another and I'm like, buddy,
this guy is back in my estimate. Not only did
(49:36):
he direct it, he wrote it too. It's a good movie.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
Yeah, he writ and directs all his movies. He Yeah,
I loved, loved, loved One Battle after Another. I think
it was my favorite movie the year that that in Centers.
We're probably tied.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
I've not seen Sinners yet, is it? It's pretty good.
It's all right, I'll check it out. Don't tell me anything.
That's fine. All I needed to hear was oh man.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
Capital G grade and it's right up your alley.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Okay. Cool?
Speaker 1 (49:58):
Great, And by the way, is from Ryan Pinto, who's
coming to see us in Denver, and I'm sorry, Ryan,
but we're not doing it on the pinto. We've already
done that live show.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
That's a shame. You can go back and listen to
it and imagine that you're there because we did release
it eventually as an.
Speaker 1 (50:13):
Episode, and then he might have been who knows.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
Thanks Ryan, We'll see you in Denver. If you want
to see us in Denver, Seattle, or San Francisco, where
you can also visit the Golden Gate Bridge, you can
go to stuff youshould Know do dot com and get tickets,
And in the meantime, if you want to email us
like Ryan did, you can send an email to stuff
Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hanging Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck
and Jerry's hanging with us too, and it's Stuff you
should Know. And we're headed west and yeah that's so.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yeah. I mean we're recording on the Golden gate Bridge.
I guess this is like two weeks wow, two weeks
to the day, I think, what from our live show
in the city of San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
That's true because it's the fifteenth in our show's on
the twenty ninth.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
That's right on a rare Thursday, oh show. Yeah yeah.
Oh by the way too, I meant to mention, and
I hope this is okay with you. I got booked
to do a show on Friday, and I haven't mentioned
that to people, but on Friday, I will be performing
in the Hanging with Doctor z show.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Do you know Doctor Zayas?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah? Do you know about this?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
No? No, no, I don't know anything.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
This is the one in which comedian Dana gould Is.
He owns a professional like full blown doctor Zais costume
and he's been doing this for years and it's like
a talk show with him as the host. Is doctor Zaiahs.
So I'm on that and I'm very excited because not
only is Janet Varney and it co founder of sketch
(01:26):
Fest and dear friend, but Dave Foley. I get to
be on stage with a kid in the hall.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
What and man, that's going to be amazing.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, and the great Andy Daly. So if anyone wants
to see that on Friday night, just go to the
sketch Fest website and check it out. I think it's
at kind of one of the small comedy.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Clubs, do you know? Okay, so it's it a comedy club.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, it's one where I did movie Crush one year.
I can't remember the name of it.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Though, Well do you remember how to find your way
back there? Though?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I hope so.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I hope so too. That's awesome, man, congrats, and yes,
I second that everybody should go see it. You're in
San Francisco or not, because I'm sure that's gonna be awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, I mean you can come. I imagine you'll be
on a plane home huh yeah. Yeah all right, but
thank you.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
I appreciate the invite. I'll be there in spirit supporting you.
You text me immediately after and be like it was
a triumph or no, it won't be anything but a triumph.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Alright. So Golden Gate Bridge.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, that's why we started talking about California and San
Francisco in the first place. Because if you don't bother
to look at the titles of episodes and you just
let it roll one end of the other. That's what
we're talking about in this episode, the Golden Gate Bridge.
There's a pretty good chance you know what we're talking about.
It's often named as the most photographed bridge in the world.
(02:40):
I could believe that.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, it's my second favorite. What's your first Brooklyn bridge? Man?
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Okay, it's got to be to bb Okay, all right,
all right, what about you. I don't know. I don't
know that I have a favorite bridge. I kind of
like the ones that look like sailboats. There's a few
of those.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah, those are nice. A Tower Bridge in London is
also quite magnificent.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Sure, and then I'm gonna sound so obnoxious, But in Budapest.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
It's not obnoxious.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
No, just being like, what's your favorite bridge? Oh, mine's
in Budapest. No, but they have I think seven different
bridges and they went they did seven different designs for
all the bridges that go through the city and connect
Buddha to Pest, right, And it really is like a
city of amazing bridges. They're all just really well done
and they're just different. It's cool.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
I agree. I forgot about that well. Also, I mean,
since we're shouting out bridges, we can't not talk about
Pittsburgh because I went to a baseball game there in
that beautiful stadium and you get those beautiful bridges there.
It's lovely.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah, it's like eight Bridges Stadium. Yeah, I think so,
is that right?
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah? Okay, eight or twelve I think they call it
eight or twelve Bridges Stadium.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
That does.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
So back to the Golden Gate. It's also, Chuck, one
of the seven Wonders of the modern World.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah, And the American Society of Civil Engineers named it
one of the Bridges of the Millennium in two thousand.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
So it's a well regarded bridge. And if you've always
wondered or always thought like, hey, I guess the Golden
Gate bridge is called that because the I guess the
weird orange color is roughly golden. I don't know, you
would be like me probably like you, chuck, and that
would mean you were wrong.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
That's right, because Golden Gate very much predates the construction
of that bridge. And with that we come to our
first story.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Okay, I'm gonna make like a horse sound while you
tell the story, so this guy will be riding a horse.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Okay, you got two ads of coconuts and you're banging
them together. Eighteen forty six. This is the Mexican American wartime.
It's going on, and there's an army officer in the
United States named John Fremont who basically said without sounds like,
without even asking anyone, hey, California's independent from Mexico. At
one point he was crossing the San Francisco Bay there
(05:10):
from Sonoma to San Francisco to fight the Mexican army there.
And he named that boy, you're really doing a great job.
And he named that mile wide strait that connects the
bay to the ocean. What would that be chrysophil.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
A can't stop.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Oh no, there he goes off into the sunset. I
guess chrysophile which means Golden Gate. And later on, rather
than the Greek version, he went with the English and
that passage was called the Golden Gate.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
That's right. So this is the bridge over the Golden Gate.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Right, did you know that? No? Not, I was yesterday
years old, as they.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Say, yep. So yeah. And the Golden Gate in particular
is pretty neat, not just because it's like the it
connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean, but geographically
it's like three hundred feet deep right there, but on
the shelf in the Pacific side it's much shallower. And
then in the bay, so the bay is like an
(06:12):
average of fourteen feet deep or something crazy like that.
So it just suddenly goes like this huge depression. And
this is what they needed to cross, like a three
hundred foot depression through the Golden Gate with a bridge.
And I think the first person to ever suggest it
was a guy named Charles Crocker. And one of the
(06:32):
reasons they needed a bridge, Chuck in the first place,
is because if you ever look at a map of
San Francisco, it's actually a peninsula, so it's connected to
the south, to the rest of California, but there's a
lot of stuff to the north of that. To get
to the north, you have to cross the Golden Gate.
So people were like, we've got to get here to there.
You know, we like Marine County, We like Pedaluma. We
(06:54):
like to say Pedaluma at least. Yeah, Sacelito is another
fun one to say. So they started with fairies and
that worked just fine. But as more and more people
showed up, Tim Francisco was a magnet for immigrants, especially
after the Gold Rush of eighteen forty nine, they were like,
we might need something better than just fairies, like especially
if we want to run railroad cars.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, and Jack, that ferry was expensive, man. Yeah. They
were actually just like tanker boats, but they would double
as ferries and say, yeah, sure, we'll take you across.
It was two dollars ahead, which is almost seventy dollars today.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yeah, and you got range teams. Yeah, I saw seventy
seven dollars even.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Wow, that's even more outrageous.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
And they gave you saltines and grape kool aid. That
was the only food you had on.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Board, just like Southern Baptist Communion.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
That's what I had in nursery school. It's actually a
winning combination.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
And that was pretty good, especially if you're in church
and you're like hard up for snacks.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So oh, there was finally one called up the Princess.
It was a side wheel paddle wheel steamer. That was
the first official ferry that happened at eighteen sixty eight.
But that guy Charles Crocker, all the way back in
eighteen seventy two, he said, we need a bridge. And
the reason why he said we need a bridge is
because he was a railroad guy, and he's like, we
need to get railroads up there. We need to get people,
(08:17):
we need to move lumber, we need to do all
sorts of cool stuff. So let's let's get a bridge, guys.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah, And people are like, there's no way. That's two miles.
No one's ever built a suspension bridge that long. And
in nineteen sixteen there was a San Francisco Sun journalist
who used to study engineering named James Wilkins. He said,
now I think we can build a suspension bridge. It'll
be three thousand feet and it'll cost in those days
(08:43):
dollars one hundred million dollars, which is almost I'm sorry,
it's more than three billion today. So everyone said that's
probably not going to happen either. So eventually it took
a city engineer named Michael O'Shaughnessy to be on the
lookout to say, we do need a bridge, but we
got to get this cost lower. Enlisted a guy in
(09:03):
nineteen twenty one from Chicago name an engineer named Joseph Strauss,
who said, here's what we do. Everyone. It is possible,
but it can't be a straight suspension bridge all the
way over, and it can't be just a cantilevered bridge.
The suspension will be too flexible and FLEXI with those wins,
and the cantilever would be way too heavy. So if
(09:24):
we do a combination of the two, I think that's
the winning idea, and it'll cost you only seventeen million dollars.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah, that was much more in line with what the
city engineer knew that the city of San Francisco would
be willing to pay for something like that, right right, Yeah.
Joseph Strauss, he became the central figure of the Golden
gate Bridge. He's often credited to the man who built
the Golden gate Bridge. That's a genuinely unfair thing to say,
because so many people contributed so much to it. But
(09:55):
he was he was not a shy person. He could
work with just about anybody. He knew how to work
the system, and he was not a self promoter, but
he definitely was after the acclaim of being the man
who built the Golden Gate Bridge. So just kind of
put that in your in your pipe for later.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Right, don't smoke it yet though, right.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
No, no, don't don't spark it. But he enlisted a
guy named Charles Ellis, who is like the I don't
know how you would describe him. I can't think of
an analogous movie character, but I feel like we can
get him across a little bit. He was obsessed with
making sure that this bridge was not going to collapse.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yeah, I would describe him as a math whiz. He
was the guy.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I think we did the when we did the New
York Subways episode, we talked about the tunnels that went
under the Hudson River.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
M hmm.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
He was a guy that came up with that plan.
And so that's a pretty good dude to get if
you're trying to build a bridge that no one thought
could be built at the time, right, like super super
math guy. Just keep math in your head, because, as
we'll see, math would end up being his undoing.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, but he was not after a claim He did
not I get the impression necessarily know how to work
with everybody or work the system. He just wanted to
do his math stuff, right.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
So he was a good guy to have in that sense.
And one of the reasons why he was so good
is because the design process was so long. At one point,
as we'll see, they just completely scrapped Strauss's idea and
started over.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Financing was also a thing. I mean, Strauss had gotten
it down to an estimate of seventeen million, and I'm
sure anybody who was paying any attention was like, we
should plan on probably at least double that, just about right. Yeah.
But the state was interested enough that in nineteen twenty
three they passed the Golden gate Bridge and Highway District
Act of California, which basically said to the people in
(11:49):
the surrounding twenty one counties, Hey, you guys want to
get in on this and basically vote for a tax
district that can create debt to borrow money basically again
in Star counties. What do you think?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah? And they said, well, what does that mean. That
sounds weird And they said, well, it means that all
the businesses and all your homes in your county are
going to be put up as collateral jointly against that loan.
And surprisingly, maybe six out of the twenty one county
said we're in. We see this progress as something that
we need. As far as the remaining counties that weren't
(12:23):
into it, you know, some of the obvious reasons is
they just didn't want to do that. A so I'm
worried about the cost overruns and like, hey, this isn't
even going to be enough. Other people didn't. You know,
this was the early nineteen twenties, so it was still
you know, kind of a I mean it was a
bustling city for nineteen twenties, but there were areas of
(12:43):
rural you know, ruralness sure across the other side, and
like they were like we don't want this bridge, Like
we've got livestock over here and we're cutting down our lumber.
And even back then they had conservation this agitating against
stuff like this. Notably the Sierra Club was like, we
(13:05):
don't want a bridge in that beautiful bay. And there
were a lot of other people that came out with
a lot of good reasons to bring up lawsuits, like
you know, earthquakes. It was one in nineteen oh six.
That was recent enough to where like what about this
earthquake thing, Like, what if that happens, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
The first big one. Yeah, shippers were like, well, you know,
we can make it through the Golden Gate of the
Pacific pretty easy. Right now, we're a little worried that
just building this bridge is going to hamper our ability
to make mad cash. The Department of War, which had
a heavy presence in that area, it was like, look,
we run like really important warships in and out of
(13:43):
this harbor. We're worried that this bridge is going to
block our progress. But then also we're worried that it's
going to become a real target for saboteurs and that
they will blow up the bridge and block the harbor
with the debris. And then the Southern Pacific Railroads stepped
up and said, we run the ferries, like we're going
to lose a bunch of money if you guys build
(14:04):
a bridge. So all these people together were either parties
to or had their own lawsuits against the bridge authority
saying like no, you can, you can't do this, And
against all of those odds, the people in favor of
the bridge managed to overcome that.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yeah, and before we break, I do want to mention
before we get some email, we mentioned Apartment of War
not in bended knee to Pete Hegseth. That was the
original name that later became the Department of Defense.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, I forgot that, which and.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Then all again now yeah, is now to the tune
of what I just read was going to cost one
hundred and twenty five million dollars to change that name
back to the Department of War.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
So another one hundred and twenty five to change it
back to the Defense Department again eventually.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Probably, So, so I just want to point that out.
Let's take a break and we'll be right back. So
(15:16):
the first design, this hybrid design was pretty ugly. There.
It was a critic that said it looked like an
upside down rat trap. So they said, all right, we
got to redesign this thing because it's got to look good.
Ellis gets together with consulting engineers leon I guess that
would be moisseyf and oh Aman, and they got together
with Strauss and they said, all right, let's go back
(15:38):
to this old idea, but a new design of a
full suspension bridge. Yeah, the longest one ever and it'll
end up being the tallest one ever at the time
at least, because you know, all the winds in the
water and the boats and everything, this thing needed to
be tall and super long.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah, and it also needed to be tall because the
angle of the cables to hold up such a long
deck had to come down at a crazy angle. Yeah,
which meant that those towers had to be really tall.
So this is going to be the tallest bridge in
the world, the longest suspension bridge in the world. And
they're like, let's do that, Let's make the impossible happen.
And it's fourth pointing out chuck, Like, these guys aren't
(16:17):
using CAD, they're not using any sort of computer. They
do not exist yet. They're not using calculators. They're doing
all of these calculations by hand, using their noodles, paper rules,
slide rules, pencils, Like, that's how this bridge was designed.
That's how they calculated the stresses on it. That's how
they figured out how to engineer it, all by hand
(16:39):
and using their heads.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yeah, amazing. They did all kinds of testing, obviously some
pretty impressive stuff. As you'll see, they create a model
that was one fifty six scale took it to Princeton
University there in New Jersey and did a scale down
equivalent of one hundred and twenty million pounds of vertical
load to tests to make sure those towers could take
(17:02):
that past that test. And like I said, there was
so much math going on. Eventually Strauss got irritated. So
the guy Ellis that they hired because he was great
at math, got fired because the math was so irritating
to Strauss.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah. Ellis later recorded that Strauss said that the structure
was nothing unusual and didn't require the time that Ellis
thought necessary for it. Oh man, I also saw elsewhere
somebody say that Strauss was envious or resentful of I
guess the respect that Ellis got from the board whenever
he went and spoke to them.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
I could see that.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
So yeah, this is And I also think that Strauss
was getting leaned on. He was the one that was
getting pressured to meet the time, and Ellis was like, no,
it's going to take six months more than that. So
finally Strauss fires Ellis in the most like cowardly way
a person can. He forces him to take vacation, and
then before his vacation's over, he's ends him a telegram
(18:01):
saying you're fired.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah, that's pretty bad. Ellis didn't receive a lot of
credit at the time, and in fact, he didn't get
a lot of credit until after he passed away in
nineteen forty nine. So we're taking our hat off to you,
mister Ellis, for your great work and your great math,
because we are both math whizzes ourselves, and we have
a lot of respect for maths.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
That's right. He also he didn't have anything to do.
He couldn't really find much work because this was during
the depression and he was fired. He went back and
he went over all the figures again, all of the
calculations to make sure they were right. He was spending
like seventy hours a week and it took it months. Geez.
And he did. And he was like, Yep, this is
going to work, even though no one was listening to him,
(18:44):
he wasn't being paid for it. He just wanted to
make sure that this thing was going to work.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
That's great. So in nineteen twenty eight, they kind of
mired their way through, or got their way through, the
mire of the legal activity and all the protests and everything.
The state government California said the Golden Gate Bridge and
Highway District is now a thing. They're going to pull
off every facet of this build. And in November nineteen
(19:08):
thirty the district issued thirty five million dollars in bonds
to finance this thing, which was a problem at the
time though, because it was during the Great Depression, obviously,
and they couldn't find any buyers for these bonds, and
all these legal matters were scaring people away, and so
they turned to kind of one of the heroes of
this whole thing in nineteen thirty two, a guy named
(19:31):
Amadio Giannini, the president of Bank of America.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Yeah, one of the most revered and respected banks in
the world. Everyone loves Bank of America. They're basically a
mascot here in the US, that's right.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
And he was also just a California hero. He kind
of kickstarted the Hollywood movie industry, the California wine industry.
So he was a guy to go to and he
was like, I got you. I got a big room
with six million dollars over here, and I'll buy those
bonds and you can get started on your project.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah, which is pretty cool. And he is one of
the heroes for sure, so they got started. They started
during the depression, as we saw, and on the one hand,
that meant financing it was difficult. On the other hand,
it meant that they had a huge pool of laborers
to tack because there are a lot of out of
work people. So they got everyone they needed basically immediately
(20:24):
to get started. It started on January fifth, nineteen thirty three.
And there are a lot of issues that construction face
that made this a unique construction job. Every day, four
times a day, so two times in and two times out.
The tide brings in and takes out three hundred and
ninety billion gallons of water through the Golden Gate. While
(20:46):
these guys are trying to build their bridge. There's tons
of fog, there's a lot of storms, there's high winds.
It was not just like a walk in the park
like apparently the Bay Bridge was to build.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Yeah, I mean apparently the Baybridge is more impressive in
some ways and was built and finished before, but it
didn't get nearly the press because it was just an
easier job overall.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Right, It's like eight miles long, which is the exact
distance from downtown Detroit to Eminem's house, and.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
I didn't see that coming when you said Detroit, I
didn't even see it coming. Nice work, thanks, all right.
So it's a difficult job, super super hard because of
the terrain and the water and the wind and the
fog and everything going on. The north tower was built
on the Marin County side on the coastline there into
a very strong layer of basalt and sandstone, and that's great.
(21:40):
So they were like, the north side is fine because
this stuff is very, very sturdy to build into. The
south tower was about one thousand feet off shore and
a bed of serpentine rock, and they went, this side
is a little trickier, so we're gonna have to take
our time a little more.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yeah. They got this guy named Andrew C. Lawson. He's
a great example of how many people were thoroughly involved
in this because every person you mentioned in this story,
just imagine there's dozens or maybe hundreds of people working
beneath them in coordination with that person. He was a
geologist and he basically took to test the bedrock. He
(22:19):
I'm not exactly sure how he did it, but he
put the equivalent of a railroad box car fully loaded
that amount of weight and force onto a twenty square
inch area and it held up fine. Something it is.
I could not find out how he did that exactly.
It's just such a spectacular way to put it that
(22:39):
I guess everyone's like, no one cares what actually happened.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Yeah, just tell me he did it.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
And then he put on an old timey diving suit
and diving bell and went down to the bedrock and
hit it with a hammer. And apparently if it makes
this sound like a dinging sound, that's what you're looking for,
because not only is it strong, but it's also flexible,
which is going to come in handy whenever the San
Andreas gives California the big one, the eight point six
(23:06):
magnitude earthquake that everyone says is inevitably coming someday.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Yeah, for sure. In order to ensure that, you know, stability,
they had workers dive ninety feet down to put explosives
down to blast out even more rock so they could
go even deeper. They had to get rid of those
fragments to even get out to that tower. You know,
they have all these materials, so a lot of big
construction like this is constructing things so you can do
(23:34):
the construction. And that was the case here. So they
had to build a road basically on a trestle just
to get out to that tower, and then they had
to protect this thing from like being bumped into by
a ship.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah. If you look at the concrete foundations that the
towers are built on, you'll notice that they're like oval
and those were designed to basically act as fenders, kind
of like if you play bumper bowling. Okay, it's basically
like that, and imagine the bowling ball is a ship
that's being captained by somebody who's not paying attention. Huh,
(24:10):
probably on his phone. Yeah, yeah, and they will hit
that fender, the bumper, and it will keep them from
running into the actual tower itself, and because of the
oval shape, hopefully kind of push the ship away from
the fender itself.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah. Well, the captain says, what was that? Yeah, they weren't.
I think they said it looked like a giant bathtub
is what they referred to it. But you know, they
filled that thing once it was peaking above the surface,
partially with concrete, pumped out the water, reinforced it with steel,
more concrete, and all of a sudden, you've got a
(24:48):
protected tower with that that Billiard's bumper bowl. Bumper bowl?
Is that what you called it?
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Bumper bowling?
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Oh okay, I thought you were talking about like bumper.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
No, no, no, bumper bowling where they put those guard rails down
in the gutters.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, we went bowling last week and Ruby still uses those.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
I do too. Sometimes I can still manage to miss
pins bumper bowling.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
But oh okay, I thought you might just roll a
gutter balls like man who can't.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
No, I think even bumper bowling, I can miss the pins. Still.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
I did the usual. I know I've mentioned this before,
but with bowling usually for and I think the other
day I hit like a like a one forty and
then like a seventy.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
I don't remember. Are those good?
Speaker 1 (25:34):
I mean for someone who doesn't bowl much, I feel
like is a pretty strong number.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Is that, dude? Or heyesus level good?
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (25:40):
No?
Speaker 1 (25:41):
No, No, like three hundred is a perfect game. Uh,
But I mean one forty means you've hit plenty of
strikes and spares and probably had a good last frame out.
I don't know if that's what they call it, but
seventy is bad. My whole point was, though, is I'm
good for one game? And then my my game really
drops off.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Okay, well, were you junk by the second game?
Speaker 1 (26:00):
No, no, no, no, no, I had I had but
one beer, a PBR draft. It was delicious.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Okay, yeah, sometimes those are the best ones, that really
crowdy ones.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
I don't do that much anymore, but it was super
refreshing and delicious.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Great.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Yeah, that's Chuck goes bowling.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Yeah and PBR uh huh. So you want to take
a break.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Oh yeah, yeah, we're there already. Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Okay, so Chuck, they've got the foundation poured. That's a
(26:49):
nice fender a bumper around the towers. Apparently, once they
got that foundation done, they erected the South Tower, which
was the more difficult of the two towers, the one
closest to San Francisco. They erected it in like six months,
which is really amazing, especially as you find like that
added up. That was not an anomaly for this project,
that kept like hitting milestones ahead of time, and that
(27:13):
used quite a bit of steel thanks to Bethlehem Steel
Corporation of Pennsylvania. And as we know from our Christmas episode,
the reason it is Bethlehem, Pennsylvania is thanks to our
Moravian friends who moved there in the eighteenth cents.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Right New Jersey chips into gott gotta shout out New
Jersey for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
I don't believe the Moravians had much to do with
naming New Jersey.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
No, no, no, But as far as the steel goes.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Okay, yes, And so Bethlehem Steel provided forty four thousand
tons of steel for each tower. That was each tower,
and this is not like a quick thing. They prefabricated them,
put them on a barge, and then sent them to
San Francisco, down the East coast, passed Florida, through the
Panama Canal, and then up to San Francisco. That's how
(27:57):
every single piece of steel, fabricated steel made its way
to the Golden Gate project.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yeah, that's right, via the Panama Canal. They get there,
they obviously use these giant cranes to lit these steel
sections into place and start kind of just putting this
thing together like a kit. At this point, and at
this point they haven't even you know. Eventually they had
temporary elevators built so people could get up and down quicker.
But before that it would take a worker twenty minutes
(28:24):
just to climb a ladder. I can't imagine how terrifying
that would be just to be climbing a ladder that high,
that takes twenty minutes to climb. But that's how it
got to the top. And then we get to the color.
Like we mentioned before, it's not named Golden gate Bridge
because of the color, because it's really not golden in color.
(28:45):
It got there, like we said, prefab then it was
painted with an orange just red lead primer just to
kind of make sure it made the journey there okay,
without getting rusted out. And once it got there, consulting
architect Irving Morrow said, man, that looks pretty darn good. Everybody,
what do you think? And everyone went bully bully, And
(29:07):
so they started searching for sort of related colors and
ended up landing on what is now known is Golden
gate Bridge International. Orange.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
I would have kept my mouth shup, but I would
have been looking around, like you guys think that looks good.
That's the color we're going.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
To paint the mean to green personally, but.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Okay. So one of the things that is great about
that particular color orange, And I think one of the
reasons people said bully for it was because it didn't.
It didn't well, it harmonized with the surrounding area. It's nice,
hilly shrubby it like. It was a good choice for
sure for that, and I think it also kind of
placated a lot of people too there like that actually
(29:48):
kind of goes with everything. It doesn't stick out like
a sore thumb. So it was a good idea, and
that International orange is still used today. You can thank
International orange for the color of your life vest if
it's orange.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
That's right. That is just regular International orange. The golden
gate bridge International orange is a little different. It's like
a variation on that, but like you said, it blended
in well. And it also did you know, the job
that it was really supposed to do was stand out
for ships and boats there in the fog. Rejected colors
included silver, black, and then black and yellow, which was
(30:24):
suggested by the US Navy, like you know, stripe, black
and yellow, because that was the best color for visibility
to them.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
It's the best color for Christian metal too.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
That's right. It's funny because I can that striper. This
stuff looks so good, but I can't picture a bridge
in yellow and black stripe. It just looks too safety industrial,
you know, or cliffs nose? Yeah, yeah, true.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Didn't the dude, the drummer from Striper have black and
yellow striped drum sticks? Even?
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I think he had a black and yellow striped everything,
if you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Oh, I see he had a black and yellow stripe Gnomon.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Let's keep going, boy, that's good, all right? So Marrow
we mentioned Irving Morrow. He's the consulting architect who said, like,
I'd like this color. He also obviously played a part
in a lot of the aesthetic aesthetic aesthetic decisions. That's tough,
good band name, but also bad esthetic. No one could
ever say it, are you going to see tonight? The
aesthetic decisions. One of the things that he designed aesthetically
(31:35):
was to make it look a little taller. Was those
tower panels decrease in size from bottom to top. Pretty
good idea, yep.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
And the well I guess Lawson was like, let's do this,
and let's add a little bit of this and maybe
put bows on the top kind of thing. Strauss, who
again is the man at the center of all of this,
he was way ahead of his time as far as
safety goes. Apparently, the Golden Project was the first one
that required hard hats on site, which is not fairly ubiquitous.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah, good little fact.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Yeah. And then he also created a safety net that
was movable, so I think the people who were in
the highest risk of falling to their deaths got to
use the safety net while they were up their work.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah, and use it they did, because that thing ended
up saving the lives of nineteen construction workers. They became
known that those nineteen became known as the Halfway to
Hell Club, which is pretty funny in a way. But
there were some deaths. In February thirty seven, scaffolding collapsed
due to an accident, thirteen men on it. The net failed,
(32:43):
and ten of them died. But in the end, eleven
people died from this project, which is pretty good. I mean,
it's awful that eleven people died. But for the time,
they would say, like for every million dollars of a project,
you can expect one death, And this thing came in
at like thirty five million or so, so they expected,
(33:05):
you know, thirty to forty deaths and there were only eleven.
So that was that was I guess a win for
safety for the time at least.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Yeah, for sure, I find that a really strange rule
of thumb. For every million spent, you can expect to death. Like,
I guess what that's based on is just the complexity
increases by the price. I may're the height something.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Yeah, probably just that means it's it's big and difficult
and complex. I think you're right, But it's definitely the
only thing the way to calculate something, it really is.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
So, yeah, there's thirty four people dead in one person's like,
how much is this bridge going cost?
Speaker 1 (33:42):
You?
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Like thirty five? And you're in.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
There's cost overruns and you know what that means.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
So they completed the towers, both towers in nineteen thirty five.
Remember they started this whole thing. I think they started
building that temporary roadway to the first foundation in nineteen
thirty one. They're moving along, and after the towers would complete,
it was time to create those four iconic cables that
(34:09):
are the actual things that hold up the road deck.
The bridge itself. The point of the bridge is held
up by these cables. And if you see one of
those cables in person, you will find that it is
three feet one meter thirty six inches. Let's see, do
it three hundred centimeters in. Let's see, it would be
(34:32):
a third of a decameter in width or in diameter,
and it's actually made of twenty five thousand wires. Each
of those cables are all twisted together.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Yeah, and to get that done, they hired John A.
Roebling's son's company is the name of the company, and
they had worked on the Brooklyn Bridge, so they were
obviously great people to call for that. But like you said,
I think you said it was completed ahead of schedule.
This was April nineteenth, nineteen thirty seven, about a million
three under the thirty five million dollar budget. Just a
(35:09):
little housekeeping here. It's one point seven miles long, ninety
feet wide, holds six lanes of traffic, two sidewalks, seven
hundred and forty six foot high towers, with the main
span between them being forty two hundred feet and at
his midpoint the span hangs two hundred and sixty five
feet above the average height of the water below. And
(35:30):
people were really excited to get on this thing.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
They were an opening day. The first day they let
pedestrians across, the next day was cars, and at the
grand opening. I think this kind of gets across the
type of person Joseph strausswa he read a poem that
he wrote for the day, and he was a poet,
so it's not bad. I like the rhythm of it.
The meter sure is that correct?
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Yeah? I think so.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
I would say go look it up and read it yourself.
I'm not going to read it. But it's called the
Mighty Task is done by Joseph Strauss. The thing that
bothers me, Aside from a couple of clunky lines, he
says essentially like that all the people who are involved
of this are glorified and that no selfish urge stains
(36:17):
its life, no envy, greed, intrigue or strife. And I'm like, dude,
he specifically didn't mention Ellis, Charles Ellis at this whole thing,
and then he goes to the he has the audacity
to say that that's not being done here at this
grand ceremony.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah, and they built a Trellis so you had a
word there in the bag.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
That's right, good point, Chuck Man.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
I don't know about Strauss, now, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
He's not really talked about like that from what I
can tell, I just kind of put this together from
different different places. But there's a there's a bronze statue
of him in Golden Gate Park, I think, and there's
books about him and his amazing feet, And it's just
I don't like people like that who take full credit
for something that yeah, hundreds or thousands of people have
(37:08):
done and that they did, like backbiting along the way
with it. It's just I don't like people like that.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
I'm with you. He actually had a Trellis line. He
was like, what rhymes with trellis? Hmm? I got nothing?
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah, he scratched it out.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Like Ellis is outside the window holding up a sign.
The math checks out.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
I saw that. No one can say for certain whether
Ellis ever saw the Golden Gate Bridge himself. I'm sure
sure that he went and saw it at some point,
because he died decade or two, yeah, a good decade
after it opened, So I would guess unless he had
like a horrible aversion at just the thought of the bridge,
(37:48):
I'll bet he went and visited it.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Yeah, I bet you're right. So we can compare it
to other suspension bridges in a few ways, because I
think that's fairly interesting. It's got a lighter roadway than most,
it does not have train tracks on it, but it
seems like that was one of the original ideas, is
they wanted a train to be able to run across
that thing. But they realized that the winds were a
(38:12):
real problem in nineteen forty after the to Come Up
Narrows Bridge disaster, and they saw those things in forty
mile an hour winds twisting around. They're like, we need
to cause we get winds up to like seventy five
miles an hour, so we need to stiffen this thing up.
So they added horizontal trusses to stiffen the structure against twisting,
and that's what brought the total weight of the deck
(38:34):
too high, basically to where they could not end up
putting railroad tracks down.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
No, like they were close to the limit of it.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
I guess right, yeah, I couldn't do it, Okay.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
So the Golden Gate it was the longest suspension bridge
until nineteen sixty four when the Arizona Narrows took over
that for a while. And like we said, there's Golden
Gate Park that predates the bridge, but Golden Gate National
Record Creation Area was created on either side of the
bridge after the bridge was already around for a while,
(39:07):
and there's some pretty neat things about it. One of
the things we remember, we talked about how people were
worried about earthquakes. Well, it actually survived the Loma Prieta earthquake,
the nineteen eighty nine earthquake that took place when the
A's and the Giants were playing each other in the
World Series and just killed a lot of people. The
(39:27):
Bay Bridge apparently a section of that collapsed and the
Golden Gate survived with no damage whatsoever from when I
could tell her, very little of it.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Yeah, pretty good there. And this is something I heard
early on in my life was that the Golden Gate
Bridge basically is in constant paint mode basically, so like
it's always being painted apparently, like it takes so long
to paint and sort of you know, take care of
the corrosion because of all that salty fog and salty
(39:58):
air and water. Right, just it never stops. It's not like,
all right, we're done and we're going to take a
few months off. It's continuously being kept up.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Yeah. And one other thing about the earthquake thing, they
somebody at some point figured out that the San Andreas
could produce at most of eight point six magnitude earthquake,
and then they went and figured out that the Golden
Gate would probably not be able to withstand that. So
they started, I think back in well after the Loma
Prieta earthquake in nineteen eighty nine, they started a bit
(40:27):
of a retro fit to try to make it earthquake
proof up to eight point six magnitude. And one of
the things that they were having to shore up Chuck
was that they didn't bolt the towers to the foundation
because they're like, these are so heavy, we don't even
need to waste the time or money on bolts. And
an eight point six earthquake, they realized if you stay
in stiffly with your leg stiff and then you kind
(40:48):
of fall to the side and one of your feet
comes off the ground. When you go back to center again,
your feet comes down, and imagine one of the towers
doing that when it comes back down on that foundation.
They're like, that foundation is not going to hold that up. Yeah,
so that's what they're trying to retrofit. Now.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Yeah, that's a big footstomp, is what they said for sure.
So we have to close now with some sort of
darker stuff because the Golden Gate bridge, if it's known for.
It's known for many things, but one thing it's very
much known for is that there have been many many
suicides attempted and completed over the years. They averaged about
(41:25):
twenty per year for a very long time. Hundreds of
others had been stopped by obviously volunteers that are stationed
there to watch for this sort of thing. Bridge workers, cops,
sometimes just random people like you see in a movie.
And they took a very long time to eventually get
a safety net, even though it was possible. They really
(41:48):
dragged their feet getting that thing up, didn't they.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Yeah. I saw that there was an opposition to it
that included it will be ugly.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Oh god, so.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Every I think since the first guy who died by
suicide's name was Harold Waber. He was walking on the
bridge all the way back, just like a few months
after it opened, and he was walking with a friend.
He said, this is as far as I go, and
he became the first person to jump to his death
from the bridge. That was in nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Yeah, what a thing, What a last line, you know?
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, imagine being that friend and being like wait what
and then yeah, yeah, I can't imagine that since then
at least two thousand people, maybe a little more, probably more,
because I think they assume that there's plenty of people
who have jumped and their bodies were never found. But
at least two thousand confirmed people have jumped to their
deaths from the Golden gate Bridge. And in nineteen ninety five,
(42:43):
the California Highway Patrol, which had been keeping an official count,
stop their official count at nine hundred and ninety seven
because they were worried that there was going to be
a rash of suicides to become the one thousandth person
to die by suicide by jumping off the Golden gate Bridge.
So officially the count's nine and ninety seven, but I
think most credible sources put it at over two thousand.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Now, yeah, and what a thing to think about, What
an awful thing to consider. But like, thank god they
thought of something like that, because they're.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Probably right, you know what the security net.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
No, the stopping the public count, because oh yeah, you know,
I would never have thought of something like that, So
I'm glad they thought of that. There was a really,
I don't know what to call it, interesting and awful
documentary from two thousand and six called the bridge. I
saw it. I'm not sure did you see that one? Yeah,
(43:39):
there's a lot to it. It was you know, the
point was to drive awareness about this and about suicide
and suicide prevention. But it was very controversial in that
they captured footage. They had cameras you know, trained on
the bridge from the mountains nearby, and they captured footage
of twenty three suicides, including a survivor, and they you know,
filmed family members and interviewed one about their loved ones.
(44:03):
It's very moving and upsetting documentary from when did I say,
two thousand and six?
Speaker 2 (44:09):
Yeah, it is so Yeah. That definitely raised public awareness
and kind of I think amplified the public outcry about
this and made people be like, wait, we probably should
do something about this, because twenty to thirty people a
year were taking their own lives at this time. Right.
They finally, finally in twoenty the beginning of twenty twenty four,
(44:31):
they finished putting up these safety nets essentially that stick
out from the side of the bridge, so that if
you jump off the side of the bridge, you're going
to land in the steel net. The whole thing costs
two hundred and twenty four million dollars and completed suicides
dropped by seventy three percent. Yeah, after they were installed.
And even more amazing than that, I think there were
(44:52):
two hundred attempts and thirty completed suicides a year on
average after the nets were installed. That fell to one
hundred and thirty two and eight in twenty twenty four,
and there were no suicides in the last seven months
of twenty twenty five. So these nets are actually preventing
people from completing suicide and also deterring people from attempting
suicide there.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Yeah, and you know, they've done studies where they've interviewed
people who did survive. Most of them don't ever try again,
which is like very encouraging to know. I think there
was a study in the nineteen seventies by a guy
named Richard Sidon, and he followed up on five hundred
and fifteen people who had been stopped These aren't people
(45:33):
who jumped and survived, but they were stopped from jumping
in the thirty five years prior to the study, and
he found that only thirty five of the five point
fifteen went on to die by suicide. So that's really
great to know that if you can be an EMT
or a police officer or a random passer by who
can get someone out of that dire situation that there's
(45:54):
a very very good chance that will be not something
they go on to complete.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Yeah, and you mentioned those volunteers that are stationed along
the bridge just for that very purpose. I would wager
that there's at least one stuff you should know a
listener who does that, and I would love to hear
from them.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
I bet you're right. And I hope someone comes to
our live show and stands up at the end and
tells everybody that they do that. I bet you that happens.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Yeah, they will get thunderous applause. That's right. I feel
like we should end on a high note. And the
high note is the Golden Gate Bridge was where James
Bond successfully defeated Christopher Walkin saving Tanya Roberts in The Bargain.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
That's right of you to a kill.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Probably the best bomb movie ever.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Hmmm, interesting, All right.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
I mean that was the one I grew up on,
so that's probably why I like that. But there's no
kid who grew up on like The Living Daylights and
was like, that's.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
The good stuff.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Chuck said, good stuff, which is where I was trying
to push him because that unlocks the listener mail.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
All right, this is a chance to plug friends of
the show here. Hey, guys, just finished the episode on
the radio, the national radio Quiet Zone. Found it very
fascinating and by the way, we got a few emails
from people pointing this out. I want to reach out
with a recommendation of one of the McElroy pods. The
maclroy brothers, Justin Griffin and Travis McElroy have long done
(47:24):
my brother, my brother and me and I've known those
guys for a long time. Super cool dudes. And then
they do a show with their dad called The adventure Zone,
which is where they play D and D and that's
become hugely popular.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
That's awesome, man, Yeah, it's super cool.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
But the second season of Adventure Zone is called Amnesty,
and it is well, it's a tabletop role playing game,
so I don't know if it's always D and D,
but Griffin has said it in the Green Bank area,
so the folks in that area that it attracts and
the lack of communication is a plot device and really
drives a story. It's one of my favorites that they've done,
(47:59):
I hold stuff you dealing with my heart. Thanks for
doing what you do. And ps, I loved hearing a
few of the macarroys on Movie Crush. I loved hearing
josh on Behind the Bastards and so on all of
my favorite podcasters. Crossing paths now and then really drives
those parasocial bonds. So go listen to josh on Behind
the Bastards your past episodes. You're on a couple of times, right.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
Yes, I was, and on Daily Zeitgeist. No, I was
on Behind the Bastards once. I was on Daily's Seikeist.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
A couple of times, Zeitgeist a couple of times. And
then I had Griffin on Movie Crush in his favorite movie,
which he claims is not his favorite movie only but
also the best movie was groundhog Day.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
It is a good movie.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
And I had Justin on and Justin I think I
can remember every single guest in their movie. Still his
was with Nail and.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
I I've never seen that. Isn't that a Morrisey album?
Speaker 1 (48:54):
I don't know, but it's a British independent film, so
it wouldn't surprise me.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
This is Vauxhall and I okay with.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Neil and I Richard D. Grant. It's it's really good.
I think you and Yumi would both like it.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
All right, we'll watch it then, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
It's from like the indie movie revolution of the nineties
and from England, and it's really really great.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
You know. I think I was talking smack not too
long ago about pt Anderson. I don't know if it
was on the podcast or not, and that I basically
hadn't liked anything at his since Boogie Knights, Okay, maybe Magnolia, Okay.
Then I saw One Battle after Another and I'm like, buddy,
this guy is back in my estimate. Not only did
(49:36):
he direct it, he wrote it too. It's a good movie.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
Yeah, he writ and directs all his movies. He Yeah,
I loved, loved, loved One Battle after Another. I think
it was my favorite movie the year that that in Centers.
We're probably tied.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
I've not seen Sinners yet, is it? It's pretty good.
It's all right, I'll check it out. Don't tell me anything.
That's fine. All I needed to hear was oh man.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
Capital G grade and it's right up your alley.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Okay. Cool?
Speaker 1 (49:58):
Great, And by the way, is from Ryan Pinto, who's
coming to see us in Denver, and I'm sorry, Ryan,
but we're not doing it on the pinto. We've already
done that live show.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
That's a shame. You can go back and listen to
it and imagine that you're there because we did release
it eventually as an.
Speaker 1 (50:13):
Episode, and then he might have been who knows.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
Thanks Ryan, We'll see you in Denver. If you want
to see us in Denver, Seattle, or San Francisco, where
you can also visit the Golden Gate Bridge, you can
go to stuff youshould Know do dot com and get tickets,
And in the meantime, if you want to email us
like Ryan did, you can send an email to stuff
Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
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Josh Clark
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