Posted on 04/28/2006 3:15:10 PM PDT by Paddlefish
From the Top of the Mark (Hopkins), especially.
Dunno - but they got that guy on the Empire State Building yesterday, didn't they? I don't mean this film crew did, lol, but *authorities.* 'Course, that was cuz his fat suit prevented him from getting over the boundary.
Me, too - and I waited more than 2 years before I allowed myself to view it.
And usually, "five minutes before the miracle."
Thanks. Insightful of him, lol.
Only The Haight and Bourbon Street, to me.
Simple. You'd have to go further out of your way to get to the ocean side, hence mostly bicycles on the ocean side. Park and walk to the bridge, you are on the city side by default. I doubt there is anything more to it than this.
Nope. But your close.
Suicide barrier missing on city side?
Either way, I'm only suggesting it is a matter of convenience and not something deep and meaningful.
Found this on a site called "Everything2.com" which elaborates on the bs psychological stuff and then on the "prgmatic" theory - which mirrors mine, save for that missed the fact that pedestrians are not allowed on the west side. So the answer is even more obvious than my original thought.
The vast majority of suicides from the Golden Gate Bridge jump from the east side of the bridge, facing the San Francisco Bay, the minor islands of Alcatraz and Angel Island, the shores and hills of Berkeley and Oakland. Why they do not dive from the west side of the bridge, stretching towards the Farallon Islands and the Pacific Ocean, is a subject of some debate.
Psychology argues that the act of suicide is directed at persons or situations at whose hands the actor has suffered, that the act is vengeful. The history that drove this person to extinguish themselves would most likely lie to the east of the Golden Gate Bridge, and therefore the diver faces east, projecting their jump as an act of vengeance. Or, as the more humanist of the chemical mechanics offer, the actor recalls some person or event that now lies to their east, and wishes to transmit their action in that direction.
There are spiritualists, however, who contend that the suicide fears to confront the trackless horizon of the sea, its intimation of the infinite, in such proximity to their Empedoclean apotheosis.
The pragmatists, those hard observers of the world and its ways, note that the western side of the bridge is reserved for bicycle traffic, pedestrians are not allowed.
If pendestrians WERE allowed on the West Side, I bet the all the jumpers would still be on the East side due to my original theory.
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