Alphabet of giants

Maybe it stems from growing up in western Nebraska where the tallest thing sticking up above the winter wheat was the row of decrepit elm snags and chokecherry trees serving as a windbreak outlining the farmyards, the grain elevator by the tracks on the edge of town, and the radio tower tethered in the distance, red lights lazily blinking an asynchronous rhythm. Or from my time in Cheyenne where the tallest building was the capitol, whose gilded dome can be seen glinting just above the treetops from every road leading into town. There's something about tall buildings that fascinates and exhilarates me.

Whether flying into New York past the endless architectural forest, floating along the Chicago River gazing skyward, or crossing the Bay Bridge with the city lights sprawled out above and below, the little internal thrill of excitement never ceases to spread an involuntary smile across my face. Walking amongst the dark and windy painted canyons of the Financial District every day for years now still hasn't dulled my wonder, and I'm perpetually looking skyward at the dizzying angles, claustrophobic juxtapositions, the reflections of glass and concrete and stone and steel and light.

I suppose there's always a building under construction somewhere in every city, but there has been something of a skyscraper boom in San Francisco in the years I've lived and worked here. Where 30-story towers now stand, I remember the cracking asphalt and chainlink fences of surface parking lots, or a row of sickly poplars. Things slowed down for a bit after the dotcom bust, but the construction pace has picked up with renewed vigor lately, with cranes overhanging taller and taller buildings all over between my office and the waterfront.

And now, with several plans submitted and approvals underway, talk of a new tower being built here (just miles from the San Andreas) that would be the tallest building this side of Chicago -- perhaps even taller than the Empire State Building -- that could tower over 350 feet above the city's current tallest building, the Transamerica Pyramid. Proposals, too, for a series of several other skyscrapers that would also be among the country's top 20 tallest buildings. I'm grinning just typing about it.

I'm all for stemming rampant unregulated construction and growth, for keeping neighborhoods (like mine!) feeling like neighborhoods and for preserving views. But downtown, where you've already got steel and glass and polished stone stretching heavenward, why not think big? Huge! The earthquake threat can be accounted for by modern engineering (more than ever before, anyway... if the biggest big one hits, we're all screwed anyway). The view argument seems a little weak for the proposed sites because if you wanted to look out at nature, you wouldn't live in a city with skyscrapers to begin with; a city's skyline has its own beauty in the twinkling lights and soaring heights, the illusionary permanence, in the defiance and integration and complexity and chaos and humanity.

It's not much of an argument, but if we as a civilization, a culture, a city, are capable of creating immense monuments that boast of our ability and achievement and are filled with life and work and plumbing and thrumming, shouldn't we do it? Maybe? Just for me and my idiot grinning?