Bickering by the Bay : Golden Gate’s Birthday Bash Is Losing Its Shine

When invitations went out for the Golden Gate Bridge’s 50th anniversary celebration, it was to be an affair to rival last summer’s Statue of Liberty centennial, with a parade of tall ships, a rock concert, the biggest display of fireworks ever and live network television coverage.

But today, seven weeks before the event, the party givers are beset by bickering and unable to raise much money. The celebration has been scaled back so much that one city supervisor compares it to a county fair. There will be high school bands and fireworks, but no rock concert, no tall ships, few corporate sponsors and no live national television.

In a city renowned for its stylishly hedonistic pursuits, the thought of ballyhooing its Golden Gate to the world, only to have a flop, is unbearable. Trying to salvage the city’s pride, Mayor Dianne Feinstein is putting her prestige on the line by personally raising money for the party.

“It just became apparent that unless I got involved, we wouldn’t have much of a celebration,” said Feinstein, who will be calling on campaign supporters and corporations for donations.

In the mayor’s plan, San Francisco’s party will cost a restrained $500,000, a fraction of the $22 million envisioned less than a year ago. In her first day of fund raising, Feinstein kicked in $100,000 in city funds and collected $10,000 from Gray Line Tours.

Feinstein said there will be fireworks and permanent lights for the span. The San Francisco Symphony and Tony Bennett will perform, there will be a parade of antique cars, Navy ships will steam under the bridge and there will be marching bands. Beyond that, things are not altogether clear.

“The bridge speaks for itself,” Feinstein said. “If it is a beautiful day, it will be wonderful.”

Nice weather or not, there will be disappointment by the bay. For in San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge is no mere bridge. It is, said Bob Ross, publisher of a local newspaper for homosexuals and one of the event’s planners, the “symbol of the West Coast,” every bit as important here as the Statue of Liberty is to New York.

It therefore made sense that any event marking its 50th year should rival Liberty weekend. With Iacocca-like ambitions, San Francisco Supervisor John Molinari, another event planner, proclaimed last May that the bridge’s 50th anniversary “will be to the West Coast what the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island was to the East Coast.”

There was to be a $10-million bridge museum, permanent lighting for the towers and a weekend-long party with a 50-ton cake for the throngs of tourists, residents and leaders of all the major Pacific Rim nations. At night, they would all count down from 50, and President Reagan would flip a switch and the bridge would be bathed in 50 spotlights. And, of course, the bridge would be closed for the day so party-goers could re-enact the moment 50 years ago when the bridge opened and people walked across.

‘Fulfilling a Dream’

“We are talking about fulfilling a dream,” Molinari said last May.

The dreamers since have been awakened. Unable to resolve local backbiting, let alone raise $22 million, the event has been scaled back repeatedly. Last weekend, Molinari said the May 24 event will be a little like a county fair.

It is unclear whether the bridge will be closed to cars even for a short time at sunrise to accommodate walkers. The Golden Gate Bridge District Board of Directors--a panel of local officials that governs the bridge and is in charge of the celebration--has put off a vote on the matter until April 24.

“Every time you turn around,” said Ross, a district director, “you’re being thwarted by a bunch of small-minded people.”

The brouhaha has not brought out the best in the locals. When Herb Caen, the Chronicle columnist who thinks that the bridge party should feature the Big Band music of 50 years ago, needled the rock concert plans of impresario Bill Graham, Graham was quoted in a rival column as calling Caen “an amoeba . . . filled with pus and vomit.”

The latest blow came a week ago when Graham canceled his concert, although it had nothing to do with Caen. Graham was angry that bridge directors refused to close the bridge to car traffic for the full day. Unless the bridge was closed, Graham had warned, there would be massive gridlock on the span from the hundreds of thousands who would come to the concert. And a traffic jam was not what he had in mind for the bridge’s 50th birthday party.

Graham envisioned a “world-class event.” The “public could experience the bridge naked, just one time.”

Free Concert

The free concert would have had something for all, with each act having its own connection to the city--the Grateful Dead, Huey Lewis and the News, the San Francisco Symphony and Tony Bennett.

“It is not world disarmament,” Graham said, “or hunger or AIDS. But it could have been an awesome occasion. Picture that bridge on that day--no cars, open to the people, the bay full of boats, music on Crissy Field. No traffic, no noise, no pollution. . . .

“It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Meanwhile, people in Marin County, on the other side of the span, thought closing the bridge was a dumb idea. Sausalito Mayor Carol Peltz listed some of the problems it would cause: Marin County residents would have to take a more circuitous route over the Richmond-San Rafael and Oakland-Bay bridges to San Francisco. There is no announced parking plan for people who want to make the bridge walk. There are 70 buses lined up to ferry walkers to the bridge from outlying parking lots, but so far no drivers are signed.

Joyce Pavlovsky, a Marin County resident who has helped lead the opposition to the closure because “we are concerned about people in Marin who must get to San Francisco,” sniffed at the ambitions of the party givers. It takes “chutzpah (to think) that our bridge should have a celebration to rival the Statue of Liberty,” she said.

Object of Derision

With all its problems, the celebration has become an object of derision. A group is planning the Doo Dah Parade of bridge bashes for the neighboring Carquinez Bridge. The short, cantilever span between Crockett and Vallejo will be lit by party-goers holding flashlights powered by donated EverReady batteries. Chic Sausalito will celebrate not just the most graceful span’s 50th year but also the 50th birthday of Spam.

“Evidently there are going to be all these little Spam cans around, maybe in the shape of the Golden Gate Bridge--who knows,” Peltz said.

Terry Sellards, executive director of the Friends of the Golden Gate Bridge, the official party committee, wonders where it all went wrong. A year ago when he took the job, he thought that “it would be a piece of cake; everybody loves the Golden Gate Bridge.”

However, the prospects of spending $22 million started the “bad press” here and that scared off local donors. National donors did not give because there were no local donors, he said.

Had a television network agreed to broadcast the bash, corporate sponsors could have been expected. But because of time zones, the fireworks here would have aired after midnight on the East Coast, and network interest was nil.

Threatened to Sue

Fund raising was made harder because a private promoter, who said he came up with the idea first, threatened to sue any corporations that got involved with the government-run event. The promoter, Scott Redmond, still plans his own celebration.

“We’re desperately late, and we’re having to re-plan,” Sellards said.

But he still said it will be “a successful day” that will generate worldwide attention.

San Francisco, after all, has an official party giver, Charlotte Maillard, good friend of Mayor Feinstein. She has given receptions for the Queen of England, national leaders during the Democratic National Convention and the 1985 Super Bowl.

Her living room has one of those only-in-San Francisco views: Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and all that. There will be, she said without a doubt, a celebration. Her volunteer effort will be her rent for having such a view.

Maillard said there will be money--”if we have to rob a bank.” She said she has organized fireworks shows “a jillion times,” and this one will be no problem. The bridge will be closed, at least for a few hours at sunrise, May 24, so people can quietly walk across--”even if we have to storm the bridge.”

Maillard would not use the term “county fair” to describe what she has in mind. This remains San Francisco, “the city that knows how.” The symphony will perform, there will be gourmet food and the bay and bridge are always beautiful, she said. Though it will not be Liberty Weekend, Maillard said, it will “showcase what we have.”