San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge has found its voice... and it’s already driving some locals nuts.
The city’s help line says the noise ― variously described as a whistle, hum, howl or even scream ― is caused by “high winds blowing through the newly installed railing slats along the bike path on the bridge.”
It’s not constant, only when the winds are just right, as was the case on Friday:
It can be heard for miles throughout the City by the Bay and beyond:
Local public radio station KQED referred to the bridge as a “a giant orange wheezing kazoo.”
“The Golden Gate Bridge has started to sing,” Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz, a spokesman for the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District, told the station. “The new musical tones coming from the bridge are a known and inevitable phenomenon that stem from our wind retrofit during very high winds.”
He said the retrofit is “necessary to ensure the safety and structural integrity of the bridge for generations to come.”
In other words, unless there’s another retrofit, the haunting sounds are here to stay.