Vincent Parry and Harry Callahan, each loaded with menace and an attitude, are blind to the spectacular view of San Francisco Bay as they drive through the Waldo Tunnel. Parry, having escaped from San Quentin, is running from the law while "Dirty Harry" Callahan is, at least technically, the law. These desperate men are so focused on their personal version of justice that they become dangerous to themselves and others. We know they're dangerous because they stand out in such stark relief from the beauty of their surroundings.

Twenty-four years lie between these two legends. In Dark Passage, Humphrey Bogart, as Vincent Parry, the convict who has plastic surgery to avoid discovery, drives through the Waldo Tunnel when it was only a single bore. By the time Clint Eastwood's infamous and perhaps more criminal Dirty Harry, from the movie of the same name, drives Highway 101, the Waldo Tunnel has two bores and is decorated with rainbows.

As if the legends of tough guys Bogart and Eastwood weren't enough weight for a tunnel to bear, fans of Neil Stephenson's elaborate, massive novel Cryptonomicon, claim that the rainbow was painted to honor the real life tough guy, General Douglas MacArthur. In 1918 MacArthur was chief of staff of the 42nd Infantry, also known as the Rainbow Division. Since MacArthur has little association to the San Francisco Bay Area (he retired to New York) and since the painting was done just as rainbows were coming into vogue as a design element, that's probably imagination stretching further than it does in either movie plot.

While the rainbow stays quietly in place, its meaning has shifted from simple design element to hippie symbol to gay standard. The tunnel remains a pleasant surprise to those who've never seen it, and a cheerful, familiar façade to those of us who see it often. The pot of gold at the ends of this rainbow is our real estate.

The first bore for the Waldo tunnel was drilled in 1937, the second in 1954. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers database, Civil Engineer, Alan S. Hart "reportedly conceived the idea of painting a rainbow over the Waldo Tunnel in Sausalito." Robert Halligan, a CalTrans employee painted the rainbow as part of the CalTrans Transportation Art Program. This program is also responsible for things like the statue of Father Junipero Serra on 280 near Palo Alto and murals in downtown L.A. You can find more art, as well as ways to make more art, sponsored by the program at http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/LandArch/trans_art.htm.

The Waldo Grade, as the highway leading to the tunnel is called, is named after politician, William Waldo, an unsuccessful Whig candidate for governor in 1853. He must have some a good deal of local influence to have had a steep road, a dark tunnel and a shallow harbor named after him. Should your mind get going on other roadway peculiarities, you can get all sorts of trivia from the California Department of Transportation's website.

Geography is everything. The natural beauty of the Bay Area is both framed and made accessible by some wonderful public projects. Moving north on 101 from San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge both adds to and announces the channel that leads to San Francisco Bay. Then, as if to separate the urban from the suburban, a driver has to go through the Rainbow Tunnel losing sight of the city going one way and gaining it going the other.

Further separation from normality ensues as the echoes of people honking their horns on their way through the tunnel overwhelm whatever you have on the radio or in your head. Harmonicist Bruce "Creeper" Kurnow says that his tone poem/song, Honk if You Love Harmonica, is a musical simulation of this ritual honking. Somewhat less noisily, Marin native, comedian Robin Williams, in an early routine, postulated that the rainbow had been installed by the largely wealthy, white Marin population as an ethnicity detector.

I've never taken the beauty of the Bay Area for granted, although I have been lulled into professional complacency, refusing to go where a speedy pace of working life is uninterrupted by the magnetic pull of nature. The Rainbow Tunnel is the gateway to the temptation that is Mount Tamalpais, Muir Woods, Point Reyes and points further afield. I yield easily. I shall return.

from the San Francisco Reader, Issue #4, April 2005