Four. Years.

Let that sink in the next time you watch a pothole on Van Ness take eight months to fill. Or the next time a city "infrastructure study" costs $4 million and produces a PDF nobody reads.

The Golden Gate Bridge was a marvel of private-sector engineering ambition backstopped by a public bond measure that voters actually approved because they understood the return on investment. It came in under budget. It opened ahead of schedule. It remains, nearly nine decades later, structurally sound, globally recognized, and — let's be honest — the only reason half the tourists clogging Fisherman's Wharf even came here in the first place.

Speaking of which: if you're one of those tourists reading this, do yourself a favor. Skip Pier 39. As one SF resident put it bluntly, Fisherman's Wharf is "B quality food at best." Head to North Beach, hit Chinatown, grab something at the Ferry Building. You'll thank us.

But back to the bridge. The real lesson of that 1935 photo isn't just "wow, old-timey workers were fearless" — it's that San Francisco used to be a city that built things. Big, bold, consequential things. The kind of things that required risk, capital, and a government that got out of the way long enough to let engineers do their jobs.

Today we can barely get a bus shelter approved without three rounds of community input, an environmental review, and an equity assessment. The 1930s had their own problems — serious ones — but they didn't let process become a substitute for progress.

The Golden Gate Bridge stands as a monument not just to San Francisco's beauty, but to what's possible when a city decides to actually do something instead of just talking about it. We could use a little more of that energy.