The city is home to people from every country and whole sections of the town are named for the denser ethnic groups like Japan town, China town, and of course the infamous Gay town - the Castro District.
Last week San Francisco blew a small fortune setting off fireworks from the Golden Gate Bridge on it's 75th year. Few revelers likely gave much thought to the thousands that have used the bridge to end their lives.
Some 1600 people have taken their last plunge from the bridge. And about 40 per year join them. And really nothing much can be done to stop them. Oh yea, eleven guys died building the thing back in 1938, falling briskly thru the safety nets.
Since the entire area is due to experience 'the big one', namely a quake as large as the one that destroyed the entire city back in 1908, the bridge has been undergoing an expensive retrofit to bolster its joints and struts.
And the other big bridge - the Bay Bridge is being replaced entirely. Why people don't jump from the Bay Bridge seems an odd exclusion by the suicide crowd. The Bay Bridge is much bigger, much longer, and just as high.
Well, something more grand and dramatic we suppose about joining so many others in the cold depths below the Golden Gate. After all, if your gonna check out, best do it in the same nasty spot everyone else does. Conformity in suicide, ah the city by the bay.
