Coit Tower
I can't write, or say, 'Coit Tower' without my inner Butthead making his Butthead noise, 'huh, huh, he said coit.' I know the name comes from Lillie Coit, who after her death in 1929 left money for the building (Butthead also wants me to point out that her middle name was Hitchcock). But it's so darned close to coitus, and the building is a 210 foot phallic monument on top of one of San Francisco's highest hills. Some say it's shaped like a fire hose nozzle; I don't actually know the truth behind that. But while the murals on the first floor (which are the only ones we were allowed to see; the second floor and stairway were not open for some reason) are beautiful, 1934 depression-era, and in places plainly political, often concerned with labor, quite worth seeing on their own, what concerns me is the, uh, tip of the thing.
If you read you know I'm afraid of heights, or am working through that fear. And I've been afraid of ascending Coit tower for over 10 years.
I often walk to the hilltop, sure. It's the perfect thing after a stomach-bloating dinner in North Beach (this time, at the old school italian Golden Spike); you can go up stairs near Washington Square straight to the hilltop itself. The thing is I've never been up there when the inside of the tower, with its elevator to the top, was open, thankfully I would normally say. Sunday night, when S and I were in the city again and we walked up there after dinner, it was open.
As soon as we got to the outside of the building she was like, 'oh look, there's people inside.' And I'm thinking, 'no, no, it can't be!' It was. And after a decent amount of time touring the murals (which are only inside), she said, 'why don't we go up the elevator.' I said, 'it costs money, but not much.' She still wanted to go. And horrified as I was I told myself I was not going to let fear stop me from doing something all on its own. If fear was my only reason, that wouldn't be good enough. We bought our death-passes I mean tickets and got into this little rickety steel elevator with a friendly, asian college-kid operator who actually closed the door and shut a steel gate behind it by hand.
He said something like, 'okay, is everybody ready; it will take about 60 seconds to get to the top and then we'll stop very suddenly, okay, very suddenly, so don't panic; this is all original stuff, original equipment, but they check it all the time, they just checked it yesterday,' everyone laughs...
And I am in this five by six box (maybe that) holding on to a side rail and beginning to hyperventilate while I listen to the elevator grind and groan. I didn't know what would be there when the door opened: I imagined it would open right onto an open balcony two hundred feet in the air, and I even said to S, 'I may have to go back down in the elevator.' I needed to say that, and she admitted later that was the first time she remembered my phobia. Oh I've been up in some high restaurants or bars lately, a few, but not in anything like Coit Tower. And not in an elevator like this since...well, probably never, but the closest I came must have been at Long Beach State.
The thing thrums its machine way to the top and then, slam, truly, it slams and drops an inch or two. It was quite dramatic, and if the elevator guy hadn't told me it was going to happen I would have had a heart attack and subsequently solved all my metaphysical questions.
Then he pulls back the gate and the door, and thank god, I was in an enclosed little area with stairs going up. This let me get out, hold on to a stair rail, and catch my breath; I thought I was going to faint. S was very cool, we hung out there for a while, and then slowly I went up, then up another landing, into the open top of Coit Tower.
There are balconies, and perhaps they used to let people onto them though we couldn't go there, but above these is an open landing with the tower walls going up around, like something in Tolkien, like Orthanc. Above us were big open windows without glass (is that a window; I know no architecture) and there were little windows all around (with ledges, ledges my god, covered in coins). Thankfully the lower windows, small as they are, had glass covers padlocked into place. People squeeze coins through the opening between the window and the building and there are representatives from all over the world, an impressive collection really, occasionally collected, I imagine, by the people who run coit tower.
So I was enclosed, but not enclosed, wind whipping through the room itself (again, open tower-top rooms like this must have a name).
It took me a while to get near the windows, and I was holding on to the square columns and the hand rails most of the time; though by the end I was fairly relaxed, looking out at the most magnificent view of San Francisco I know (and why did no one stay long; we couldn't have been up there more than twenty minutes and so many people came and went; the panic-stricken idea crossed my mind at one point that I might get left up there all night if were the only ones there but I decided that was groundless). The tower-top is not big, maybe twenty feet across total, and we walked from window to window and saw the glorious bay (the sea was comforting to me, even from that height) and the piers and simply the entire city. For while the tower is only 200 feet up, the hill itself is small, steep, and high, so that you actually look down from a considerable unobstructed height. What the grand canyon is to the natural world, coit tower is to the urban.
The fog was coming in hard and fast from the west, blowing in trails right over the building and through the upper windows, and we were about level with it, so that it was like racing through clouds. All the buildings of San Fran, or most at least, can be seen from up there, and treasure island, the bay bridge. The Gate was behind the fog, unfortunately, and we couldn't see Berkeley though we could see Alcatraz. Frankly, it was one of the most sublime and exhilirating things I have ever seen.
If you don't mind spending seven dollars and fifty cents per couple, it is one of the only tourist activities in the city I can recommend, besides a cable car ride (preferably in the morning) and Irish Coffee at the Buena Vista. Oh, yeah, well the ice cream sundaes at Ghiradelli, and the maritime museum, and the alcatra tour, and the other musuems, theaters, restaurants...
But you get the point: I did it. I freaking did it. It took me a while to calm down afterwards, but I acted contrary to my fear. Even before we went back down the elevator, I felt great, and that feeling just got better. My wife told me later I am a brave man, and I've never ever felt brave. Fear is still so much a part of me, and it has always felt like my master, an irresistable force of inner nature, and in its presence I feel cowardly and weak.
Even in my last blog, on sailing, I write about lifejackets as if I'm an instructor in a boat full of students. Why? Because I obsess about safety. Because I'm afraid and want to leave nothing to chance. I love sailing the Bay and feel comfortable there after only three days on it. My skipper friend has asked me to crew on a boat in September to Santa Cruz and I'm scared peeless. Scared of that dark, overcast and often fog-ridden coastline (though it's less foggy in September, he picked what should be the best month to sail); I'm scared of being in a boat on real swells and waves. All of southern california, below point conception, is not as open to the true pacific swell; the further south you go the more the channel islands, including catalina (in fact this is called the catalina eddy) block the sea; and simply, the higher the latitude the more wave and weather.
So while I know the coast guard would be at hand fairly quickly, I think, anywhere along that coast, and I wouldn't go without wearing a state of the art lifejacket, harness, and tether (better gear than my skipper has, though his is much the same) and probably carrying my own strobe light and radio (I don't think he carries a strobe in case he goes over even) oh geez, just talking about it I'm sweating.
Oddly enough, I'm afraid of getting sea sick more than anything. The ocean outside the gate moves up here, it moves and bumps. I'm fairly sensitive to motion, but the only time I've been puking sea sick was the day of my first dive and there were other factors in play (plus I took no meds).
I know I don't have to go, and I know this is much different from Coit Tower. In fact I found a sailing school in Santa Cruz itself which is much cheaper than the one on the Bay and I could begin weekend lessons before this alleged trip. Hah. Beat you. I will already sail near the coast there!
But you see. I didn't know I was going up coit tower until I got there or it would have changed my entire trip. I will probably have a good time on the boat, though I do have questions about the cruise first (will we be sailing at night, who else is going, can you really get there that fast, etc.) but sometimes fear kicks my butt (I think obsessive fear over this sept. trip was part of the reason I got sick) and sometimes I kick its butt. The key, for me, is to face it still. To not let it dictate my actions.
You will know I'm cured, incidentally, not when I sail to Santa Cruz but when I get on a freaking AIRPLANE (I would rather be covered in scorpions, eyes shut tight, hearing their clicking scorpion bodies). I know commercial jets are the safest way to travel, much safer than driving to los angeles and certainly safer than scuba, which is something I do with some anxiety perhaps but nothing close to fear; still, flying is the big one for me. That's why I take little steps...a high hotel restaurant, another, one higher yet, then the open coit tower. The nervous system adjusts, begins to realize there is no threat, repeated exposure finalizes the cure. I've met technical climbers who began because they were afraid of heights; same with small airplane pilots. And it worked. And I'll get there.
***
Peace to all. The weekend was good in many ways, good food, I found an incredible bar in the Hotel Majestic (in moderation, of course, but I tried a new gin, Juanipero from San Fran itself and it is world class) I toured the Balaclutha, a three mast square-rigged ship. I even found the name of the whaler my grandfather sailed out of San Fran on around 1900 (yes, grandfather, 1900); my dad kept saying the Alice Knows; it was the Alice Knowles, and I've found drawings and even a probable photo (the maritime bookstore at Hyde Street Pier is the best I've ever seen)...even crew lists, though I did not see his name I don't doubt the story. Every band that played with Short Bus was very good, well save one maybe, but the other four were very good, and Short Bus put on a good show and I got to talk to RAS and that was all good. They keep improving, and their drummer, Damian, is completeing his tranformation into John Bonham I am sure.
Peace to all. There should be recovery bracelets the way there are Livestrong bracelets. I'd get a fear one and take it all kinds of scary places.
Genuine love,
t
If you read you know I'm afraid of heights, or am working through that fear. And I've been afraid of ascending Coit tower for over 10 years.
I often walk to the hilltop, sure. It's the perfect thing after a stomach-bloating dinner in North Beach (this time, at the old school italian Golden Spike); you can go up stairs near Washington Square straight to the hilltop itself. The thing is I've never been up there when the inside of the tower, with its elevator to the top, was open, thankfully I would normally say. Sunday night, when S and I were in the city again and we walked up there after dinner, it was open.
As soon as we got to the outside of the building she was like, 'oh look, there's people inside.' And I'm thinking, 'no, no, it can't be!' It was. And after a decent amount of time touring the murals (which are only inside), she said, 'why don't we go up the elevator.' I said, 'it costs money, but not much.' She still wanted to go. And horrified as I was I told myself I was not going to let fear stop me from doing something all on its own. If fear was my only reason, that wouldn't be good enough. We bought our death-passes I mean tickets and got into this little rickety steel elevator with a friendly, asian college-kid operator who actually closed the door and shut a steel gate behind it by hand.
He said something like, 'okay, is everybody ready; it will take about 60 seconds to get to the top and then we'll stop very suddenly, okay, very suddenly, so don't panic; this is all original stuff, original equipment, but they check it all the time, they just checked it yesterday,' everyone laughs...
And I am in this five by six box (maybe that) holding on to a side rail and beginning to hyperventilate while I listen to the elevator grind and groan. I didn't know what would be there when the door opened: I imagined it would open right onto an open balcony two hundred feet in the air, and I even said to S, 'I may have to go back down in the elevator.' I needed to say that, and she admitted later that was the first time she remembered my phobia. Oh I've been up in some high restaurants or bars lately, a few, but not in anything like Coit Tower. And not in an elevator like this since...well, probably never, but the closest I came must have been at Long Beach State.
The thing thrums its machine way to the top and then, slam, truly, it slams and drops an inch or two. It was quite dramatic, and if the elevator guy hadn't told me it was going to happen I would have had a heart attack and subsequently solved all my metaphysical questions.
Then he pulls back the gate and the door, and thank god, I was in an enclosed little area with stairs going up. This let me get out, hold on to a stair rail, and catch my breath; I thought I was going to faint. S was very cool, we hung out there for a while, and then slowly I went up, then up another landing, into the open top of Coit Tower.
There are balconies, and perhaps they used to let people onto them though we couldn't go there, but above these is an open landing with the tower walls going up around, like something in Tolkien, like Orthanc. Above us were big open windows without glass (is that a window; I know no architecture) and there were little windows all around (with ledges, ledges my god, covered in coins). Thankfully the lower windows, small as they are, had glass covers padlocked into place. People squeeze coins through the opening between the window and the building and there are representatives from all over the world, an impressive collection really, occasionally collected, I imagine, by the people who run coit tower.
So I was enclosed, but not enclosed, wind whipping through the room itself (again, open tower-top rooms like this must have a name).
It took me a while to get near the windows, and I was holding on to the square columns and the hand rails most of the time; though by the end I was fairly relaxed, looking out at the most magnificent view of San Francisco I know (and why did no one stay long; we couldn't have been up there more than twenty minutes and so many people came and went; the panic-stricken idea crossed my mind at one point that I might get left up there all night if were the only ones there but I decided that was groundless). The tower-top is not big, maybe twenty feet across total, and we walked from window to window and saw the glorious bay (the sea was comforting to me, even from that height) and the piers and simply the entire city. For while the tower is only 200 feet up, the hill itself is small, steep, and high, so that you actually look down from a considerable unobstructed height. What the grand canyon is to the natural world, coit tower is to the urban.
The fog was coming in hard and fast from the west, blowing in trails right over the building and through the upper windows, and we were about level with it, so that it was like racing through clouds. All the buildings of San Fran, or most at least, can be seen from up there, and treasure island, the bay bridge. The Gate was behind the fog, unfortunately, and we couldn't see Berkeley though we could see Alcatraz. Frankly, it was one of the most sublime and exhilirating things I have ever seen.
If you don't mind spending seven dollars and fifty cents per couple, it is one of the only tourist activities in the city I can recommend, besides a cable car ride (preferably in the morning) and Irish Coffee at the Buena Vista. Oh, yeah, well the ice cream sundaes at Ghiradelli, and the maritime museum, and the alcatra tour, and the other musuems, theaters, restaurants...
But you get the point: I did it. I freaking did it. It took me a while to calm down afterwards, but I acted contrary to my fear. Even before we went back down the elevator, I felt great, and that feeling just got better. My wife told me later I am a brave man, and I've never ever felt brave. Fear is still so much a part of me, and it has always felt like my master, an irresistable force of inner nature, and in its presence I feel cowardly and weak.
Even in my last blog, on sailing, I write about lifejackets as if I'm an instructor in a boat full of students. Why? Because I obsess about safety. Because I'm afraid and want to leave nothing to chance. I love sailing the Bay and feel comfortable there after only three days on it. My skipper friend has asked me to crew on a boat in September to Santa Cruz and I'm scared peeless. Scared of that dark, overcast and often fog-ridden coastline (though it's less foggy in September, he picked what should be the best month to sail); I'm scared of being in a boat on real swells and waves. All of southern california, below point conception, is not as open to the true pacific swell; the further south you go the more the channel islands, including catalina (in fact this is called the catalina eddy) block the sea; and simply, the higher the latitude the more wave and weather.
So while I know the coast guard would be at hand fairly quickly, I think, anywhere along that coast, and I wouldn't go without wearing a state of the art lifejacket, harness, and tether (better gear than my skipper has, though his is much the same) and probably carrying my own strobe light and radio (I don't think he carries a strobe in case he goes over even) oh geez, just talking about it I'm sweating.
Oddly enough, I'm afraid of getting sea sick more than anything. The ocean outside the gate moves up here, it moves and bumps. I'm fairly sensitive to motion, but the only time I've been puking sea sick was the day of my first dive and there were other factors in play (plus I took no meds).
I know I don't have to go, and I know this is much different from Coit Tower. In fact I found a sailing school in Santa Cruz itself which is much cheaper than the one on the Bay and I could begin weekend lessons before this alleged trip. Hah. Beat you. I will already sail near the coast there!
But you see. I didn't know I was going up coit tower until I got there or it would have changed my entire trip. I will probably have a good time on the boat, though I do have questions about the cruise first (will we be sailing at night, who else is going, can you really get there that fast, etc.) but sometimes fear kicks my butt (I think obsessive fear over this sept. trip was part of the reason I got sick) and sometimes I kick its butt. The key, for me, is to face it still. To not let it dictate my actions.
You will know I'm cured, incidentally, not when I sail to Santa Cruz but when I get on a freaking AIRPLANE (I would rather be covered in scorpions, eyes shut tight, hearing their clicking scorpion bodies). I know commercial jets are the safest way to travel, much safer than driving to los angeles and certainly safer than scuba, which is something I do with some anxiety perhaps but nothing close to fear; still, flying is the big one for me. That's why I take little steps...a high hotel restaurant, another, one higher yet, then the open coit tower. The nervous system adjusts, begins to realize there is no threat, repeated exposure finalizes the cure. I've met technical climbers who began because they were afraid of heights; same with small airplane pilots. And it worked. And I'll get there.
***
Peace to all. The weekend was good in many ways, good food, I found an incredible bar in the Hotel Majestic (in moderation, of course, but I tried a new gin, Juanipero from San Fran itself and it is world class) I toured the Balaclutha, a three mast square-rigged ship. I even found the name of the whaler my grandfather sailed out of San Fran on around 1900 (yes, grandfather, 1900); my dad kept saying the Alice Knows; it was the Alice Knowles, and I've found drawings and even a probable photo (the maritime bookstore at Hyde Street Pier is the best I've ever seen)...even crew lists, though I did not see his name I don't doubt the story. Every band that played with Short Bus was very good, well save one maybe, but the other four were very good, and Short Bus put on a good show and I got to talk to RAS and that was all good. They keep improving, and their drummer, Damian, is completeing his tranformation into John Bonham I am sure.
Peace to all. There should be recovery bracelets the way there are Livestrong bracelets. I'd get a fear one and take it all kinds of scary places.
Genuine love,
t
Comments
Reading this post made me want to stand up and cheer for you.
However, my husband is reading a book in bed only a few feet away from me, and mostly falling asleep. I don't wish to startle him, so I will simply write my good cheer instead of verbalizing it.
But picture me standing and clapping, nonetheless.
As someone who also suffers from a fear of heights, I'm proud of you. Peace brother.
Thanks again. It was a real rite of passage, a step of growth.
t