Page 197 - People & Places In Time

San Francisco
Water Bar restaurant bar beneath the Bay Bridge
A late morning walk along the Embarcadero with our friends Jim and Becky, especially on such a beautiful sun swept day, is the perfect prelude to lunch. A farmer’s market in front of the Ferry Building and sail boats on the bay make everyone feel good, enticing many out of their offices to walk, run, eat and enjoy. As my wife Jackie and I, with our friends, casually work our way south
we eventually arrive for lunch at the Waterbar restaurant. Beautiful inside with an enticing view through two story high windows that allow you to look up toward the Bay Bridge. The food is as spectacularly good as the ambiance. Jackie had a cauliflower soup that she loved, and I of course could not pass on the op- portunity for a plate of Oysters, a fresh green salad with bread and wine. The bar at the center of the large dining room faces the glass wall looking out toward the bay; most certainly this looks like the best place I’ve seen to spend an afternoon with Martinis and Oysters, and I don’t imagine life could offer anything better than that.
I can no longer run as I did in 1985 while competing in the Bridge to Bridge race, when I finished among the top one thousand of the ten thousand runners who started in front of the Ferry Building. I had placed myself so far back in the pack because of my lack of confidenc that it took several minutes to cross the start line and to actually begin. By this time many runners were well ahead of me. The ten-mile (not a 10k) run wound through Fisherman’s Warf, up and down the hills of Pacific Heights, through the Presidio until we turned around at Fort Point under the Golden Gate, finishing on the Marina Green. When crossing the finish line I distinctly heard a woman’s voice shout “way to go Jerry”. I continue to fantasize as to who that might have been, though most likely there was another Jerry in such a large group of runners that I was with.
I had passed so many runners on the hills that I realized then, that I was a competitive runner. I really believe that I could have placed among the top two hundred fifty runners if not better had I started in a more advantageous spot, nearer the front.
Two years ago, in 2016 a new permanent lighting display for the newly completed Bay Bridge replacement was turned on forty years before, on
an evening in 1986 we took BART to the foot of Market Street, we walked up the on-ramp to the top of the Embarcadero (since torn down) as traffic that night was totally gridlocked. Eventually we found ourselves standing at eye level with the clock on the Ferry Building tower. The occasion was as big of a fireworks and music program as I have ever witnessed. The show launched from barges floating in the bay, some barges included enormous speaker systems. The reason was to turn on, what were then, new lights for the Bay Bridge. Hearing the explosions echoing from the cityscape behind us, I turned to see the show reflected in the vibrating windows of the buildings; I really thought they might shatter.
This remains an event of a life time, one that I’ll never forget, but of course this only happened once. There was not a show such as this for the most recent re-lighting.