Are the Bay Bridge lights worth saving? Our design critic says no

The Bay Bridge's Bay Lights are old and decrepit and have grown too expensive to repair and will go dark this spring. Chronicle Urban Design Critic John King says don't bring them back.

As Brobdingnagian distractions go, "Bay Lights" isn't so bad.

Spotty swirls of LED lights drift in seemingly random patterns along the west span of the Bay Bridge. They hover above the water like a 1.8-mile-long screen saver, and there was quite the social media buzz when they debuted in 2013.

Back then they were novel and new. Now they’re about as fresh as the sight of Miley Cyrus twerking, and it is time to put "Bay Lights" to rest.

This isn't just a passing thought — I’m reacting to ace Chronicle columnist Heather Knight's scoop this month that the supposedly permanent installation will go dark in March because it needs a major overhaul. The instigator of the illuminated show says this time he really can make it permanent, and fully immersive, if he can just get 11 or so deep-pocketed disruptors to pony up $1 million each.

Put that way, the deal sounds great: Let a handful of the 1% fund a backdrop for our selfies. Ignite a light show for everyone near San Francisco's waterfront to see, whether they want to or not.

And whereas the current display only faces north, "Bay Lights 2.0" would also face south. It even would face inward, toward the upper deck's five lanes of traffic: "We’re working closely and safely with bridge officials to reimagine ‘Bay Lights’ on both sides of the cables," Knight was told by Ben Davis, who hatched the concept and now is "chief visionary officer" of Illuminate, a nonprofit focused on public art installations at civic scale.

So what's not to like? Plenty.

Ben Davis, founder, president and CEO of Illuminate, poses for a portrait with the Bay Bridge in the background. Davis is trying to secure funds to renovate and expand the bridge's light display.

I’ve never been a fan of the installation, though I expected to love it in 2013 when I visited the Embarcadero to see the new sensation up close. Instead of being dazzled, I encountered a pretty show that also was paper-thin, cool for a few minutes and then that was that. Worse, the installation was at odds with the immense structure it reduced to a canvas: The 25,000 LEDs played up the least distinctive aspect of the west span, the thin vertical cables that tie the roadway to the thick suspension cables above, the rhythmic force that loops across the water from Yerba Buena Island to Rincon Hill.

Onlookers watch as the "Bay Lights" installation illuminates the thin verticle cables of the Bay Bridge in 2013.

This is structural drama writ large, an unadorned triumph — at least until Davis, as he tells it, blessed the ugly duckling with a magnanimous act of 21st century pizzazz.

"If people thought about it at all, it was mostly from a sense of annoyance that they had to get across it," is how the region regarded the west span, Davis told Knight. Cue the figurative light bulb above his head: "I thought, what if this was a canvas of light?"

The idea in 2013 was a two-year installation, but Davis then proclaimed that he was prepared to make the lights permanent since, he said in 2015, "The whole region should take pride that we have a work of art that's envied around the world." When the initial quest for a groundswell of small donations fizzled — hashtags do not generate royalties, alas — he got a single donor to pay half the cost so that it would remain in perpetuity, or at least 10 years.

Guess what? Fog and wind and shifting temperatures caused the light strands programmed by artist Leo Villareal to deteriorate more quickly than expected (Fog? Who could have predicted that?). Visit now and it's a mottled marvel with bald spots and frozen imagery. Not a good look.

That's why Davis is pushing for what he's calling "Bay Lights 360." Custom LEDs to replace the old ones would be joined by a new batch facing south.

The "Bay Lights" installation on the Bay Bridge originally featured 25,000 LEDs, but fog and wind and shifting temperatures caused the light strands to deteriorate more quickly than expected.

Plus those additional lights focused inward, toward westbound traffic, creating what the ever-loquacious Davis dubs "a magical portal through which you can enter the city."

Which sounds fun — once. Then it's the same aimless show night after night, but in a compressed spot were they’re impossible to avoid. No more distracting than a cell phone screen, backers might argue … but aren't we told constantly not to look at our cell phones while we’re driving?

Not all large-scale public art is bad.

When the towers of Embarcadero Center are outlined in lights during the holidays, they’re an exhilarating accent. Same with "Let's Glow SF," which projects artwork onto downtown buildings for a short spell in December. Villareal's "Point Cloud," a 100-foot-long stream of ever-shifting LEDs in the Moscone Center's glassed-in pedestrian bridge above Howard Street, serves as an ever-varied counterpoint to the gray masses around it.

But "Bay Lights" goes on night after night, hour after hour. The bridge that it supposedly celebrates is treated like a blank slate.

This isn't artwork that prods us to look at the structure or the skyline or the city or the region in a different way. It's a pleasant gimmick in a setting that doesn't need gimmicks and hype.

If a few big spenders do sign their names to the digital equivalent of seven-figure checks, whatever. The lights will come down in March and then, supposedly, return in its newfangled version by autumn.

And if they don't?

The Bay Bridge will do just fine, thank you. So will the rest of us.

John King is The San Francisco Chronicle's urban design critic. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @johnkingsfchron