A Bridge Too Far

There was a front-page article in this morning’s San Francisco Chronicle celebrating the beginning of construction of a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge.

Alas, the vociferous anti-suiciders finally managed to push the pusillanimous bridge directors into approving a barrier, so now the clean lines of the bridge will be sullied by posts and nets and fences, squandering millions of dollars of public funds.  Or, as it is usually phrased in screeds like this, wasting zillions of taxpayer dollars.

Oh please.  I’m in a bit of a depression right now and having trouble coming up with posts for this site, but i promise you that if i were to End It All, it for damn sure would not be by jumping off that bridge.  Hell, if i just walked up to the rail and looked over, i’d expire on the spot of fright, so i don’t need no expensive steenkeng barrier, being scared to death of heights.

Why oh why couldn’t we have come to our senses and found a more cost-effective way of reducing the number of suicides off that bridge?

Of course nobody listened to me when i offered the perfect solution.  All we have to do is follow the practice used on rural bridges all over the state, a $25 sign at each end.   And OK, since it’s a larger bridge, we’d need a larger sign, so let’s estimate it at $250 to allow for the usual cost overruns.  The sign would read, “NO DIVING”.