We were supposed to get an exclusive tour of the work being done on the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge, but damage to it the night before caused a bit of a speed bump to our production.
On October 27th 2009, I headed back home from a busy day at the office, making last minute preparations for our first day of shooting on the bay bridge story. We were all set, armed with a film permit which I had spent nearly a week to secure and which we needed to film the progress cal trans was making on a new, seismically sound eastern span.
But then I turned on the evening news and heard that the Bay Bridge was closed. No, it wasn’t an earthquake that was the culprit but a repair made to an eyebar over Labor Day, which now had failed, sending thousands of pounds of steel crashing down into the westbound lanes east of Yerba Buena Island. I quickly dialed the California Department of Transportation (Cal Trans) press office. They confirmed what I feared – that our shoot was indefinitely postponed, pending the necessary fixes on the bridge.
But it was too late for us to cancel the crew. The shoot had to take place. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that you have to be nimble and resourceful when your story takes you in interesting, unanticipated directions – like today.
The next morning, Producer Jon Fromer and I, along with our production crew, got into our van and headed south of market street, searching for a way to get onto the bridge. We showed our media credentials to a San Francisco police officer stationed at a roadblock. He told us we could enter the bridge from an on-ramp off of 2nd Street. One lane was left open for motorists to get to Treasure Island.