When I was growing up, I lived a little ways North of San Francisco and when I was a teenager my siblings and I used to go into The City at least once every summer just to kick around all over town and play in the elevators all day. I was the oldest in that group since my older brother was gone or busy, maybe 15, and the youngest was our step-sister Lori, uh maybe 10 I guess. The others were step-sister Vicki and my half-brother Rich and whatever friends we could drum up to go with us.
We would start early in the morning on a weekday to beat the tourists and take a couple of commuter buses or maybe a bus and the ferry downtown. Once there, we would hit all the usual spots, Union Square, St. Francis Hotel, Hilton Tower, Macy's, Cable Cars, China Town, Pier One Imports, The Hyatt, Ghiradelli Square, Fisherman's Wharf, etc. We would keep a low profile in the lobbies of the Hotels and then play in the elevators. The St. Francis had the best elevators. They were real fancy with glass walls and when you got above the third floor you would be outside the building. I don't remember how many floors but it was probably close to thirty. You could see the whole City east of Union Square from there.
Chinatown and Pier One were all about buying weird candy and little trinkets. Ghiridelli Square was the same and Fisherman's Wharf had a cool Magic shop over by the Wax Museum. I got some really cool hand-painted T-shirts that were worth some laughs down through the years. One year, though, we were right at the South end of Chinatown by the Chinese arch and somebody, I don't remember who, naively said, "Hey, let's see if we can get to the top of the Bank of America Building." We normally didn't mess around in office buildings because the security was a lot tighter,even in those days, than it is today, but for whatever reason, we decided to do it.
The Bank of America Building in San Francisco has the most floors, 52 stories, of any building in the City but it's only the second tallest since they built the Transamerica Pyramid. We were only about a block away so we marched over and walked right in. Being a weekday, it was completely packed in the ground floor lobby. We immediately noticed that there were security guards everywhere and you couldn't even get to one of the banks of elevators without checking with the security desks first. By milling around a bit we were able to tell that the secure bank of elevators went from about the 30th floor up to the top and the other bank of elevators only went to the twenty-ninth floor.
Well we knew we didn't have a chance to get past the security desk so we decided to try our luck and see what would happen if we just went to the twenty-ninth floor first. We figured we could just go part way up and then switch to the secure elevators. So up we went, nonchalantly, to the twenty-ninth floor, as high as we could go without some kind of authorized appointment or special security clearance. The car started out full of busy business people and then we were the last ones in the elevator at the end of the ride.
The difference between the ground floor lobby and the twenty-ninth floor was like night and day. It was completely deserted up there. When we stepped out of the elevator, it was completely quiet and as we started looking around there was not a soul to be seen in any of the hallways, especially no security guards. That was good but there was a major problem. Apparently the secure elevators didn't even stop on any floor under the thirtieth and we, therefore would not be able to just switch elevators and finish the ride.
We took a quick vote and decided to try to find a stairwell and at least check it out. Maybe we'd be able to just go up the stairs to the next floor and catch the secure elevators from there. So we followed the exit signs to a stairwell and found that sure enough, if we went into the stairwell and allowed the door to close, we'd be locked in the stairwell on the twenty-ninth floor of a skyscraper. While we were at it somebody went up to the thirtieth floor and verified that, yes, that door was also locked.
Our young minds were a little daunted by that thought but to a young mind, there is but one thing that has the ability to counteract almost any amount of daunting, adolescent curiosity. Amazingly, the majority vote was still not only for locking ourselves in the stairwell, but for going up instead of down. We weighed and discussed the risks and were actually very frank about it. We knew we could end up having to walk all the way back down to the ground floor, but it was collectively worth it.
We did make a valiant attempt to block the latch on the door to the twenty-ninth floor but when we closed it, it just didn't work, so there we were stuck in the stairwell almost exactly halfway up the San Franciscan Mount Everest. To our credit or shame, we still voted to go up and up we went. On every floor we tried the stairwell door and on every floor it was locked from the outside.
Finally after about ten floors we were thrilled and relieved to find that the door was just barely ajar. Expecting to find a deserted hallway on the other side we immediately burst through it. When I say that we burst through it, what I mean is that we all started out with the intention of bursting through it. Right up to the moment when our eyes beheld the scene on the other side of the door we were definitely in the act of bursting through the door. It's just that the act of bursting through the door was never completed. It was more like halfway bursting through a door, or bursting halfway through a door.
It took about two seconds for the whole "door bursting through" experience to complete. About two of us got far enough through the door to see what was on the other side. The door swung open as we were quietly babbling in our childlike excitement and suddenly, instead of finally escaping from the stairwell into the safety of a deserted hallway and being in the next stage toward our goal, we were surrounded by hundreds of people. The door opened into some kind of enormous room, packed wall to wall with women typing on typewriters at tiny little desks and since every single one of those hundreds of women was not expecting to hear children come bursting suddenly into that room while they were working, every single one of those hundreds of women raised their heads and turned to look straight at us. I suppose one could have nightmares like that. I never did, but I can say that I will never forget the experience. The image of all those faces is embedded permanently in my memory.
Like some weird law of physics, however, we were suddenly and immediately struck collectively silent and the door literally sprang back toward us, pulled by our hands to instantly rest in exactly the same position we had seen it when we first noticed it was ajar. The faces of those of us who had seen the "other side" communicated concisely that the others were to immediately follow our lead without question and we all started sprinting up the stairs to escape anybody from the typewriter farm deciding to investigate. We were then able to continue our search for another unlocked door.
By the time we had gone two or three more floors up the skyscraper, we had hurriedly explained what had happened to the others and there was no disagreement about whether or not that door could be our way out of the stairwell. To us it was as good as locked. I don't think even if we had climbed all the way up to the top and come all the way back down, we would have used that door as a shortcut to the elevators. We would have rather walked the remaining forty floors to the bottom than go back in that room full of people that looked like our mothers.
As luck would have it, two or three floors above the typewriter farm was another open door and this one did open onto a deserted hallway. This time we peeked ever so carefully through the crack in the door before slipping quietly into the silent, carpeted hallway somewhere about ten floors from the top of the building. We quickly found the "secure" bank of elevators bereft of security guards. In profound anticipation we stepped into one of the elevators and pushed the highest numbered button, the one marked fifty-two.
We didn't know if the fifty second floor would be swarming with security guards or what. I think in our childlike innocence, we just figured we could pretend that we had been accidentally locked in the stairwell and that we just happened to find our way out above the twenty-ninth floor instead of below it and that we had then accidentally gotten into an upward bound elevator instead of downward and we would be escorted politely out of the building and sent on our way.
In reality, the fifty-second floor was much like the forty-second and the twenty-ninth. It was completely deserted. What a letdown, we thought. what good was it to be on the highest floor in San Francisco if you couldn't even get to a window to look out and verify you were in fact that far off the ground. Having come this far we were not about to give up easily and so we committed to making a thorough search of the floor for windows, balconies or open offices.
Sure enough, at the end of the far hallway, instead of the usual, heavy, solid hardwood door, there was a lively glass door with the words, "Bank of America", and under that, "World Headquarters". Strangely we were only slightly impressed by that and even more amazingly the door was unlocked. Maybe it was the transparency of the door and the obvious lack of typists or anybody at all for that matter on the other side of the door, but we didn't even hesitate. We watchfully opened that door and walked right in.
To our right was a small room that looked like a doctors waiting room with overstuffed couches and chairs so we quickly ducked in there to gather our wits. We sat quietly in there discussing our next move and simply astounding ourselves that we were sitting in such a luxurious room staring at a huge portrait on the wall of some old Italian guy that must have been one of the founders of the Bank of America.
We could barely hear typing in the distance down the hallway but this time it was obviously just one typewriter. I think we expected to be caught at that point because for several minutes we really didn't seriously consider any additional moves. maybe we thought it was enough to have been here in that room and we could say we had achieved our goal having gotten that far. After sitting and talking quietly for several minutes without any sirens going off and absolutely no sign of any movement from the hallway or any other offices, we stole ourselves to explore just a little further into the alien realm that was these esteemed offices.
With more nonchalance than any human ever exhibited before that moment or after, we silently sauntered down the hallway toward the sound of the typing. Halfway down that hallway we hit gold. The door on our right led into a large darkened room. It was a good thirty feet by fifteen feet and incredibly it was two stories tall inside. In the middle of the room was one huge, oval, dark, hardwood table surrounded by large cushy black leather chairs. On the far side of the room were at least two enormous windows with velvet curtains and the windows went all the way to the ceiling of the two story tall room.
With hearts beating like hummingbirds we moved to those windows. They faced West and outside was all of San Francisco. Not only was it one of the most amazing views I have ever seen, but you could see almost straight down the side of the building. I'm guessing we we approaching five hundred feet up from the streets, maybe more. You could see Union Square like a tiny little green postage stamp and just beyond it was that stupid little St. Francis Hotel with it's insignificant little glass elevators. We silently stared from each other to the view out the windows not caring that our mouths and eyes were equally gaping open in astonishment.
As we were standing silently at those windows I noticed that at least one employee walked right past the door to the room, looking right at us but they never said a word. Maybe they just thought we had come with some VIP and were waiting for them to collect us. I have no idea how long we were in that room, the board room at the world headquarters of the Bank of America, but it seemed like hours. I'm sure it was only a few minutes at the most. Eventually we reversed our course and headed back out the glass door in unspoken agreement that our mission was accomplished.
We headed for the secure elevators and took the long ride all the way down fifty two floors to the lobby. And as we walked out past all those security guards at their desks, if anybody had looked at us, they would have thought there was something physically wrong with us to have such amazing grins on our faces.
bill June 05, 2007, at 01:32 AM CST
