Tag Archives: golden gate bridge

Marin County Thrill Ride

golden-gate-bridge-christian-lewis-web

During last call on Friday nights, I usually wait out the shit show in some dark recess of The City. A few weeks ago, though, trying to escape the sloshed fields of the Mission, I was driving past the Armory Club when a guy jumped in front of my cab.

“Will you take five of us?” he asks.

While it’s not exactly legal to transport more people than there are seatbelts, what are laws in San Francisco anymore but mere suggestions?

As three women and one dude pile into the backseat, laughing and grunting as they position themselves in a tight mass, the first guy holds the door open like he’s directing traffic, then jumps in the front seat.

“83 Elaine Ave.,” he says. “We’re going to my place. I have plenty of booze, so we can keep this party going. Right?”

Everyone cheers.

“Where?” I ask.

“Mill Valley,” he tells me.

“To the bridge!” the guy in back yells. “Take us to the bridge!”

Read the rest here.

[photo by Christian Lewis]

The Shapes of San Francisco

 

Selling San Francisco Out of the Back of My Taxi

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This week’s column for the S.F. Examiner is about taking two tourists to see the Golden Gate Bridge and not being able to find it…

“Welcome to summer in San Francisco,” I tell the two girls from Long Island in the backseat of my cab as we roll across the Golden Gate Bridge, shrouded in a thick blanket of fog. “I swear, there’s a bridge in here somewhere.”

Twenty minutes earlier, when I picked them up on Market Street across from the Hyatt Regency, the sun was shining. It was 6:45 p.m., and I was feverishly trying to make my nut while there were still hands in the air.

Read the rest here.

 

Photo by Jan Pöschko. Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

Midnight on the Golden Gate Bridge by Christian Lewis

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The span is quiet. As I make my return south to the The City, I look up to see the tower fading into a bed of Pacific fog. The lights of Downtown, Telegraph Hill and the Wharf struggle to reach me through the thick night air. Crossing the bridge after sunset and beyond is a part of my job as a cab driver that I revel in and it always ends before I am ready. From the grandeur of the bridge I can witness all the beauty and character of The City without being confronted with what is broken and dying inside of her. I fell for San Francisco the first time I came aboard and it is these brief moments that remind me why I came here and why I stay…

 

photo and text by Christian Lewis