Nearly 10 million people visit the Golden Gate Bridge[1] each year. And wherever there is such a widely popular and recognized landmark, any number of people want to use it as the backdrop for any number of stunts. A scene from the James Bond movie A View to Kill was filmed at the top of the north tower (though their request to throw a dummy from the tower top to the roadway below was denied). People have attached bungee cords to the rails and jumped. One man walked on stilts across the bridge while another tap danced his way across the span to celebrate his 75th birthday. A few have been able to sneak past security cameras and motion detectors to scale the main cable: some to protest, others for the fun of it. Although there have been many arrests, nobody has ever died performing these stunts.
My favorite stunt happened on February 5, 2001 when security cameras caught 12 people at 3:30am jumping out of a truck and pushing the empty shell of a red VW Beetle over the eastern side of the bridge before jumping back into the truck and speeding away. The VW had been attached to a cable that was attached to two-inch nylon webbing that had been attached beforehand to the underside of the roadway. The result was that the VW hung precariously over the shipping route. People flocked to the bridge to get a glimpse, though heavy fog obscured the view from the vista points. Ship traffic was stopped for four hours as authorities tried to figure out what to do. San Francisco media outlets then received a faxed press release from engineering students at the University of British Columbia in Canada taking credit for the stunt. The release read in part that the stunt had been committed “to draw attention to the masterful feats of professional engineers and to celebrate the skills of the tradespeople who built the bridges.” Identical stunts had previously occurred on Vancouver bridges.
Eventually bridge workers cut the nylon webbing on the underside of the span, letting the vehicle drop into the water where it quickly sank. The students were never identified or arrested.
[1] Golden Gate Bridge: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4916
