S.F. Sutro Tower July 4 Golden Anniversary celebrated with light show
SAN FRANCISCO -- Sutro Tower, San Francisco's looming broadcast antenna complex turns 50 on July 4. The anniversary will be commemorated what is hoped will be a spectacular light show visible across the city.
The masterminds behind the Bay Lights and the Market Street Pride rainbow lasers are set to light up Sutro Tower for five nights beginning Tuesday night. The installation is called "LoveAbove" and the final preparations were made late Monday.
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"The reason you do this -- the first law -- is to make it beautiful," said Ben Davis, head of Illuminate, the group bringing San Francisco LoveAbove.
Behind a thick layer of fog acting something like a stage curtain, technicians rushed to get everything ready for a performance that requires absolute precision.
"Each project is different," Davis said. "The sacred geometry of this one is just mind-blowing."
Davis and his Illuminate team will honor Sutro's 50th by sending 12 beams of light up through the tower, with a twist.
"... A little mathematical twist we're trying to have where every beam leans in 3 degrees and twists over a few degrees so they all go perfectly through the waist of Sutro Tower, twisting upward but never touch each other," he explained.
Getting the pattern to work requires getting the beams in just the right direction and that is tricky business.
"Yeah, they'll all rotate around and you'll see a hole right through the center when the skies clear out and the beams are just perfect," Davis said of the design. "We're not gonna make it flashy, blinky or disturbing. We're always going to be pursuing beauty but we wanna see what happens if we move color through it."
And for Davis, the title, "LoveAbove" really sums up the intent -- it's about allowing everyone to send and receive a little light through Sutro on its big anniversary.
"What I really want to have people to lean into is the metaphorical promise of this tower," he explained. "This is a transmission tower. It sends and receives signals on a massive scale."
The stage is set for five nights marking five decades and it all comes down to the one variable no one can control.
"If you think of Sutro as a frame, the sky's the canvas and the light but the artist is Karl (the Fog)," Davis said.. "We'll just see what Karl has in store for San Francisco."