Sunset Over San Francisco

Audio for Photo Story #1

The water was quiet that day, and aside from a handful of people scattered throughout the shoreline, we were left alone with our conversations and idle hands: Bouncing ideas off each other and throwing rocks into the water. It was myself, Jonathan, and Jaime: two of my good friends who were roommates in the city. The swish and pop of the water provided a percussion background to discuss random thoughts, future plans, and stories about ex-girlfriends.

Minutes earlier, we had pulled off the highway into Emeryville, avoiding the molases of traffic heading back west over the bay bridge to San Francisco. We made our way to Marina Park, which is across the bay, perpendicular to the Golden Gate bridge. We could see San Francisco to the left side of the Golden Gate, and Sausalito and Mount Tamilpias to the right.

Not long after we plunked ourselves down on the rocks, the sun edged closer to the far side of mountains, just barely scratching the top. The area around the park was flat, completely surrounded by water, and we could see stretches of patchy clouds for miles. At that point, they were just shades of gray, but the sun bending over the mountain had lit a fire, burning the entire sky like a match exploding in slow motion.

As we sat there looking towards the Golden Gate, it was a panoramic splendor. We felt small, yet significant enough to realize what we were experiencing was true beauty. The blues of the sky had reached overhead and were fading behind us into a dark navy. Still moving, albeit slowly, the clouds in front were coarsing between orange and yellow. A few of the thicker clouds only allowed violet to pass through, streaking hard shadows upon patches that trailed eastward behind us.

We were completely hypnotized, not to mention those who had quietly settled in around us. The chattering of strangers had slowed, outbursts of stories being told had turned into slow moans of awe, as all eyes faced westward. The colors above projected downward and mixed with the water below. Like the color and speed of the thicker clouds, the waves betrayed an ultraviolet hue as they crawled toward us, as if to climb up the rocks and get us wet.

Now over the horizon and mountains, the sun persisted in tweaking the colors around us. Everything in sight had become a canvas to paint upon, one last time before the night arrived. Vertigo seemed to set in as our world turned a blur between sea and sky. Up and down no longer mattered, only the streaks of clouds moving towards us and the sun moving away. Reality had become Silly Putty, with God stretching it over us thinly, and a nuclear disco ball hidden somewhere behind the mountains.

The oranges and purples became opaque, nearly indistingushable from the blues that went dark. The water gave up her last reflections and went black, except for the occasional twinkling of the crests of waves. The mountains in front were in complete silhouette. What remained were the red coals of a fire where the yellows had last been seen. Slowly it burned out, starting directly above us, and then down to the mountains in front, where the spark had originated.

The traffic over the bridge was thinning as the sun provided it's last encore. A few of the 100-odd people who had shared the sunset with us were standing up to stretch and began talking again. My friends and I were slow to break our silence, hoping it would prolong what only could be described as visual ecstacy. We stayed a few minutes longer and discussed what we had seen here, how we were incredibly luckily to have decided to act upon our laziness, to get off the highway and take a breather.

To this day, 7 years later, this is still the sunset to which I compare all others.