When the Golden Gate Bridge turned 50, and a good city descended into chaos

San Francisco Chronicle​

a day ago

It was a day for San Francisco to honor the Golden Gate Bridge.
But by mid-morning on May 24, 1987, the gridlocked horde trying to celebrate its 50th anniversary got so desperate people were urinating off the side of the landmark.
'For a few, necessity overcame modesty, producing a rush to the railing and relief into the choppy waters below,' the Chronicle's Carl Nolte wrote the next day.
That was just one indelible memory from the bridge's golden anniversary celebration, where bridge officials planned for 50,000 revelers and more than 800,000 showed up. Muni service was brought to a standstill. Hundreds of children were lost. And, most alarmingly in the moment, the bridge itself visibly flattened and warped under the weight of the masses.
I called my mother, Jeanne Hartlaub, who attended the event, and she raged like it happened yesterday.
'What a freaking s—-show,' she said. 'We had no control over where we were going. I lifted my feet off the ground, and I was being carried by the crowd.'
A recent search in the Chronicle archive revealed unpublished images — including one of a frustrated walker who hopped over the bridge railing to shimmy precariously sideways over the San Francisco Bay, plus time-lapse photos taken from high on the span that document the mounting chaos. I searched further in the archive to get the full story.
Bridge organizers had reason to anticipate massive crowds would show up. More than 200,000 people arrived for the bridge's opening in 1937, when the Bay Area population was one third its 1987 size. A similar fiasco occurred in 1982 at the first 49ers Super Bowl victory parade, when City Hall planned for 25,000 fans, and half a million flooded Market Street.
But when the Golden Gate Bridge Authority suggested closing the bridge for its 50th birthday, Marin County drivers were furious. A compromise was reached for the bridge walk to last just three hours and finish at 9:30 a.m., with a fireworks show later. Organizers said they expected just 50,000 attendees.
They were off by a factor of more than 15. A growing crowd on the city side burst through the barricades at 5:45 a.m., and found another tidal wave of humanity coming from the opposite direction.
'For about 45 minutes it was fun,' the Chronicle reported. 'Then, at 6:10 a.m., a human wall from Marin hit a human wall from San Francisco and the Great Golden Gate Bridge Walk turned into the Great Golden Gate Gridlock.'
Chronicle photos show a chaotic scene, including a baby in a stroller being passed above the throng like a crowd surfer at a punk rock show. In an era before texting and widespread cellular phone use, thousands were separated and lost.
Walkers on the sidewalks shivered in 35-mile-per-hour winds, while those in the center shed clothes in the sweltering body heat. My mother's strongest memory was of a high school band from Pennsylvania who came to perform, but quickly pivoted to survival mode.
'Those kids in the band were fainting,' she said. 'They were passing them hand over hand over the crowd.'
The Chronicle's Steve Rubenstein reported from a small 'lost and found' shack where Mayor Dianne Feinstein was helping children looking for their parents.
'I started out with four children,' bridge walker Sue Madrid said, as she approached the lost and found. 'Now I have one.'
'Officials lost count of the lost,' Rubenstein wrote.
Miraculously, the Chronicle reported the next day that no one was seriously hurt or killed. The walk's organizers apologized and admitted the bridge should have been opened to pedestrians all day with a clearer flow of traffic.
Days after the event, photos emerged showing the roadway flattened and slightly twisted under the mass of humanity, which led to some alarmist media reports. Engineers then and now insist there was no danger. ('There is no way to put enough people on that bridge to cause any structural failure,' bridge engineer Dan Mohn said at the time. 'You'd have to stick them three high and even that wouldn't do it.')
But the day is still remembered by those who were on the shaking bridge as a near-catastrophe and a good time.
While some were stuck at downtown BART stations — a frustrated crowd of 5,000 waited at the Embarcadero for buses that never arrived — there was a spirited we're-all-in-this-together mood at the bridge. Many brought bottles of champagne and shared with neighbors.
'I love this bridge,' Ollie Oliviera told the Chronicle, pulling out a bottle of cognac. 'It kept me sane in my younger years. I used to walk across the bridge to keep it together.'
And my mother reports that my grandmother Louise Leal, a Mexican immigrant who loved San Francisco and walked the bridge on opening day in 1937, had the time of her life.
My mother said she was also grateful … that she brought my grandmother's heart medication.