![_Whitney Houston, 48, Has Died [Updated]](http://sfist.com/assets_c/2012/02/whitney-houston-dead-2-thumb-250x250-693364.jpg)
Thar Be Sea Monsters?
We were flipping through the channels over the weekend and caught a few minutes of a National Geographic show on Sea Monsters. So we stopped to watch-- we're big fans of Nessie. Towards the end of the show, a segment came up about something we hadn't heard before, that San Francisco has its very own Sea Monster right here in the Bay.
Or so claim two twins, the Clark Brothers. They first spied the thing in 1985 while sitting in their truck. The thing popped out of the ocean after chasing a few sea lions around and stared right at them. The brothers described the beastie as "large, black, snake-like.”
For the next twenty years, the brothers have been obsessed in proving that what they saw was indeed a sea monster, without much in the way of success. Then, in 2004, they caught on video, (a very grainy video-- see image above) what looks like could possibly be the monster's humps (it's humps, it's humps, it's lovely lady humps) as it swam through the Bay or maybe possibly a group of them.
The brothers sent the video out to photographic experts who confirmed that there's something possibly to it and that it might just be some sort of monster swimming through the Bay. However, the experts in question are seen as non-credible by some, partly because one of them is aligned with Creationist Science and those scientists are trying desperately to prove that there are dinosaurs still roaming the earth to show that dinosaurs chilled with Adam & Eve and were around much later than everyone thinks, just like the Bible says. On the National Geographic show, they showed another video expert who noticed a few birds flying in the foreground of the video and guessed that the humps in question were merely birds floating in the water.
There have been other sightings. In 1976, Tom D'Onofrio saw a "big and dark creature -- about 40 feet long." In 1983, a construction crew was working on Hwy 1 near Stinson when they also saw something peculiar.
Now the obvious question is why with all the thousands (millions?) of people who gaze upon the Bay, the only people who've seen the monster is the Clark twins, a construction crew, and an artist? One's first initial reaction is to wonder if the Clark's maybe had a little too much fun in the 60's if you know what we mean and we think you do. Or maybe people saw something that looked weird but figured since this is San Francisco, whatevs. On the other hand, apparently a similar beastie has been seen up and down the Pacific Northwest (particularly in British Columbia) and so the monster could just be cruising through the Bay on occasion to see the sights.
Regardless, we think the idea of a monster in our waters is kind of cool. If the thing ever turns out to be true, we can only imagine the big deal it'll be. We're sure the sea monster will be renamed something more politically correct (like evolutionary challenged). Maybe he'll be brought to Burning Man? Or as a minority, he'll be designated as such and so we'll see the beginnings of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Sea Monster Alliance?
As Fox Mulder would say, we want to believe.