Ken Hopper with the sign he created. (Photo by Adrian Mendoza)
At an old military post called Fort Point tucked under the foot of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, a small sign hangs from a chain-link fence where the sidewalk ends. It reads “Hoppers Hands,” with a life-size pair of bronze-colored hands on it; below the sign, a few feet off the ground, a smaller one, with a pair of dog paw prints, is affixed.
Throughout the day, a steady stream of runners flows through the parking lot to touch, high-five, or fist-bump the hands before turning around, while those with canine companions do the same with their pets’ paws on the lower sign. Tourists, meanwhile, pause from snapping photos and watch curiously.
After all, there’s no plaque or official record explaining what it’s all about. Instead, word-of-mouth accounts and online searches reveal various layers of accuracy. One theory is that the sign is a tribute to the Alfred Hitchcock movie Vertigo, filmed on the Golden Gate Bridge. A Yelp entry spins the tale of an eccentric man named Gatticus Hopper, who lived nude on Alcatraz with his wife and children. An online media report refers to the man behind the sign, Ken Hopper, in the past tense.
That man is indeed named Ken Hopper, and at 57, he’s very much alive – and approaching his 30th year as a bridge ironworker, one of a group of hardy souls who fix and maintain the bridge, often at dizzying heights. The various accounts, especially the one about Gatticus Hopper, make Hopper smile.
“It’s funny,” he says. “It’s better than the real story.”
But the real story, as in-the-know runners and locals are aware, is plenty memorable enough on its own. Hopper got the inspiration for the sign by watching, day after day, runners and walkers touch the fence, which was put up in December of 2000, before turning around. Wouldn’t it be nice, he thought, if they had something more inspiring to touch than rusty chain-link or the “No Trespassing” or “Men at Work” signs on it? So, in 2000, he had the bridge’s sign painter create a small plastic sign with a pair of high-five hands and affixed it to the fence.
Runner Jennie Wilson high-fives Hopper after finding out he's behind the sign. (Photo by Adrian Mendoza)
About a week later, Hopper noticed – along with the runners who were now touching his sign – that a woman also made her dog touch the fence below. He had another sign made, this one with a pair of dog paws. “I still get a kick out of it,” Hopper says.
Around 2003, one of Hopper’s bridge co-workers insisted on adding the words “Hopper’s Hands.” Says Hopper: “He’d always say, ‘[People] need to know these are Hopper’s Hands. Finally, he just took it upon himself to paint it on there.”
Hopper replaces the sign every couple of years as weather and the wear of untold touches takes their toll. Recent color schemes have featured red-and-black and orange-and-black as a tribute to the San Francisco 49ers and Giants. For the current version, the seventh, which is made of the same sturdy plastic as cutting boards, Hopper’s hands were traced. A spare is always on hand, and – germophobes take note, Hopper himself often wipes the sign down.
Health - Injuries.
The second, third and fourth versions of the signs (top row), as well as variants painted in 49ers and Giants colors. And of course, a pair of paws. (Photos courtesy of Ken Hopper)
But there’s another significant layer to the story, one that Golden Gate Bridge officials don’t often discuss: the sign’s connection, however unintentional, to the issue of suicides at the bridge, which has the most of any site in the world. Since its opening in 1937, nearly 1,600 people have jumped to their deaths from the world-famous span – that’s about one person every two or three weeks – according to the Bridge Rail Foundation, a nonprofit advocating for a suicide net.
According to a 2001 article We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back The 2025 Marathon and Half Marathon Calendar, Hopper has been among the ironworkers called upon to try to rescue prospective jumpers; at that point, he’d estimated he’d talked or wrestled down 30 people, and lost two. According to local runners and various online accounts, many people associate the Hopper’s Hands sign with the man’s real hands, reaching out to deter a lost soul from ending his or her life by plunging some 220 feet into frigid San Francisco Bay.
“If you’re running with somebody and you hit the hands, eventually the story comes out,” says Pamela Kennedy, the vice president of the Impala Racing Team, an all-female team in the Bay Area. “But not everybody knows about it.”
Hopper says he didn’t intend for the sign to be symbolic in such a way. “The story in the Chronicle came out right after the sign was put up, and people found that and tied them together,” he explains. “But when I put those hands up and the paws up, that was the furthest thing from my mind. It’s lots of things to many people. Except that some people have made it a good thing, and Hopper’s Hands is [about] reaching out and stopping those people or whatever.”
Ashley Ryan French, a running coach and personal assistant in San Francisco, has such a connection. During a low point in her life several years ago, French found solace in running.
Now, Hopper’s Hands is one of her favorite runs, for both its scenery and deeper personal meaning.
“The only thing that really made me feel better at that time was running, with the endorphins that are so good for your brain,” she says. “It comes full circle, when I run from [the sign]. I feel so happy, but I also know that at some point, someone up on that bridge above is at the lowest point in their life.”
But, perhaps with a pair of hands reaching out, it’s not always a dead-end; instead, it’s just the spot where you turn around.
A runner heads back after making contact at Hopper's Hands. (Photo by Adrian Mendoza)
View more photos of runners at Hopper's Hands in this slideshow.
