"Every morning I take a loooong hit off my meth pipe, and don't stop alll day"
Posted on 02/25/2014 8:05:27 PM PST by ConservativeStatement
(Reuters) - San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge marked a milestone in 2013 as 46 people leaped to their deaths in what appears to be the deadliest year for suicides at the California landmark, a watchdog group said on Tuesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
"Every morning I take a loooong hit off my meth pipe, and don't stop alll day"
That’s it?
That documentary is called “The Bridge” and it is truly heartbreaking — the camera shows people jumping off the bridge, including one who survived.
I’ve stood on that bridge and cannot imagine what kind of mind-set would drive someone to jump off of it.
There was some talk about putting up nets to catch the jumpers but there were arguments about the aesthetics of the nets and the whole thing was dropped several years ago.
According to the documentary, there’s been an average one jump/month since the bridge opened.
Not much of a “watch dog” group if they let 46 people fling themselves off the thing!
(To the 46: RIP)
Maybe they should be watching the bridge and not the morning papers.
I’d be afraid there would be kids daring each other to jump knowing they now have a net.
Reminds me of Paul's Case by Willa Cather, about a young man who ends up jumping from a bridge in front of a train.
When the right moment came, he jumped. As he fell, the folly of his haste occurred to him with merciless clearness, the vastness of what he had left undone.
The suicide, as she is falling
Illuminated by the moon
Regrets her act, and finds appalling
The fact she will be dead so soon.
The Mission was named “Dolores” by the Spanish padres — “tears”.
I did most of the pre retrofit sampling for the west side of the bridge (I’ve done probably the majority of it for the bay area freeways).
That involved a lot of trekking around beneath all the structures. When I was a noob out here, that stuff was quite the eye opener. I had literally seen areas with garbage 3 feet deep, with rats drinking from puddles in broad daylight, in which a human form rose from beneath the sea of garbage and shambled off.
You don’t lean against freeway columns in the city, people back up against them to take a dump and splatter them. I saw one area which stayed dry with a surface of fine dust the consistency of talcum powder. The rat tracks in that dust were so thick there were no clear patches in it, they all overlapped, for an area of over an acre. When the sun went down that place must have looked like a scene from Ben.
Some of the homeless are nasty mean, and others are STARK raving lunatics. I saw people who could, I s*** you not, be a walk on cast member of the walking dead without makeup...
You run into the occasional one that seems sane, but just decided to drop out of functional society. I could never for the life of me figure out why they just didn’t go live off the countryside or hermit up in the hills, I myself would live in just about any environment except a city if I were destitute.
There was a recent case of an older man, though only in his fifties I believe, who was an accomplished film director ... I forget his name. I also forget which bridge he jumped off, even though I looked it all up in Google Maps at the time. LA or SF.
The striking thing was that he was still very fit, and was seen to stop and put on climbing shoes, then without hesitation, scale the tall fence and leap from the top. Maybe he had just learned he was dying or something.
hmmm a very interesting choice !
Thank you.
Familiarity, perhaps, but also there's an abundance of shelter in the city. I believe there was, at some time a few years ago, an entire complex, or "hive" of homeless people ensconced in the NYC subway tunnels. IIRC, the matter became a public scandal and they were flushed out.
Back in the day, I used to take a bus out of the Port Authority Terminal on the West Side to go back up to college. One time, as we left the terminal, I observed some cops standing over an inert form across the Avenue there. No flashing lights. A five second episode of THE NAKED CITY.
Why not just build a kiosk before you get to the bridge, it looks like an oversize porta potty.
Its clearly marked as a voluntary self terminator.
(Yeah I know Bender will show up)
Its free, you have multiple choices.
You can either allow or deny having your organs harvested as well.
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