San Francisco Streets of Wonder: Magic in Every Neighborhood

The first time I saw it, the water in the highest, most intact pool at Sutro Baths was glowing. Now, last week we talked about the fables you can see in the fog out by the Golden Gate Bridge, but this wasn't a trick of the mist. This was a clear night, the sky bruised purple over the Pacific, and the water held a soft, pulsing, turquoise light. You know the spot. Up past the shattered concrete walls, where the sea spray doesn’t quite reach. It’s the pool that looks the most like it once did, a perfect rectangle of still, briny water.

I go there sometimes when the city gets too loud. It’s a quiet place. A place of endings. Or so I thought. That night, the light was faint at first. I figured it was bioluminescent algae, some natural phenomenon. But it didn't drift. It held its shape. And it pulsed... slowly... in time with the waves crashing on the rocks below. A heartbeat. One… two… three. It was mesmerizing. The ruins around me seemed to fade into the background. The sharp edges of broken concrete softened. The wind, which always has a mournful sound out there, just… stopped.

All that existed was that pool and its impossible light. I stayed for over an hour, just watching. As the tide came in, the pulsing got stronger. Faster. The glow brightened from a soft turquoise to a brilliant sapphire. And then, I saw the movement. It wasn't just one light. It was hundreds. No, thousands of tiny points of light, swirling beneath the surface. They were swimming. This is the part that sounds crazy. They were swimming in lanes. Perfect, invisible lanes, back and forth, from one end of the pool to the other.

They’d race, these tiny comets of light, then break formation and swirl into a great, glittering circle in the center of the pool, like dancers at a ball. So what does it all add up to? You look at old pictures of the Sutro Baths. You see the seven pools, the slides, the trapezes. You see the crowds—thousands of San Franciscans in woolen bathing costumes, swimming, diving, laughing. It was the city’s grand palace of joy, all under one enormous glass roof. A spectacle of water and light. And then it was gone. Fire and time took it all.

But what if the joy never left? What if all that energy, all that laughter and splashing, soaked into the very ground? What if the ocean, on the highest tides, remembers? It’s not a haunting. There are no ghosts at Sutro Baths. What I saw wasn't an echo of people. It was an echo of happiness itself, given form by the sea. A school of light-fish, swimming in the memory of a pool. I’ve been back dozens of times since. I only see them on the highest of high tides, when the Pacific pushes its way back into the ruins. It’s like the ocean is visiting an old friend.

So if you go, don’t just see the decay. Don’t just see the concrete skeleton. Look closer. The baths aren’t empty. They’re just waiting for the water to come home.