This story aired in the August 24, 2026 episode of Crosscurrents.
There’s a world of sound that doesn’t really exist anymore, and there’s a recording made on the water’s edge in San Francisco over 40 years old that captures one corner of that world. Thousands of people have found this recording, and are listening to it, to the sounds of the past.
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Story Transcript:
ANDY FREIBERG: It was pretty, pretty cheap equipment that I had, just a cassette and recorder that had two microphones on it, and I went down, made a brief recording and then brought it home, and it sounded pretty good.
So then I picked another night, I walked down the steps quite a ways, put the recorder there, set it up, walked away, and I basically had to trust it for an hour and a half.
Sound of cassette recording of 1987 fog horns.
REPORTER: That night in 1987, Andy Freiberg set up his field recorder at Lands End and captured something you can't hear anymore. He made the recording for his wife, Beckie, who he met during their medical residencies in San Francisco.
BECKIE FREIBERG: Kaiser had a little book with all the new residents that were coming that year. And so one of the residents and I were pouring over the book, and I saw his picture, and I thought, “That's the man I'm going to marry.” And it was.
ANDY: And actually what's the name of the park, Beckie?
BECKIE: Lands End
ANDY: Lands End
BECKIE: Lincoln Park
ANDY: Lincoln Park, Lands End, that's where I proposed to her.
BECKIE: Ha, oh yeah right.
ANDY: It was sorta chosen. We knew it was going to happen when we picked a spot. I didn't, I didn't pop her the surprise question, but we loved that spot, because you could hear not only the fog horns but the surf.
Beckie grew up in Kansas, and so San Francisco was quite a novelty for her and she loved it. And one of the things she loved was hearing the fog horns at night.
BECKIE: They were so relaxing, and just listening to them at night with my window open, I could smell the fog. I know some people don't think you can smell the fog, but you can. And it was just relaxing going to sleep with them every night.
Sound of cassette recording of 1987 fog horns.
REPORTER: Searching for sleep is where I found Beckie and Andy’s recording. Restless in bed one night, I was poking around online for something to listen to that could drown out the drone of the street outside. That’s when I first heard it. It reminded me of my aimless early college days, of when we’d drive across the bridge to Crissy Field, stand on the beach, engulfed in fog, blinded, only able to listen. Out of the mist came a bellowing sound, almost melodic. I took a shaky recording on my phone.
Sound of phone recording of 2021 fog horns.
REPORTER: Now, when I listen to Andy’s recording, I imagine standing on that beach, listening to those imaginary whales out there, guiding me to sleep.
ANDY: I didn't think I was going to spend the rest of my life in San Francisco.
BECKIE: I did.
ANDY: Yeah, she wanted, she wanted to. So I wanted to take a little piece of San Francisco with us wherever we went. It was in August of 1987 when I made that recording, and I made it for her – I didn't make it for anybody else – so we could take it along with us. We went, we moved to Memphis, where I did my fellowship.
REPORTER: So, what was it like hearing that recording for the first time?
BECKIE: Oh gosh. I remember hearing it. Yeah, it was kind of a busy time. I was pregnant and not feeling very well at all and I was also working, but I remember hearing it and just being very pleased and very happy because that would be a memory, and we knew that we were going to be leaving, so he did it. It was an act of love.
When he was at work and I was taking care of my baby I would turn it on and you know, I would be with Michael in the bed, and we would listen to the fog horns.
I still listen to it every now and then, of course. It makes me want to cry.
Sound of cassette recording of 1987 fog horns.
REPORTER: Eventually their second son Seth digitized the tape recording and uploaded it online. That's where I found it. What first draws me in are all the comments. There are hundreds. I go back to read them all the time. I find myself telling everybody who will listen about them.
COMMENT VOICE 1: As a kid, my dad bought his first sailboat in the early ‘60s. We sailed and raced on the bay, crossing the Gate from Sausalito to the city front, heading to the starting line. The fog horns were a constant and music to my ears. I also remember Chrissy Field was a landing strip at the time for the Army. Loved watching these light planes land there while we sailed up and down the city front.
COMMENT VOICE 2: Sounds to me like a band of boats making a beautiful melody.
COMMENT VOICE 3: Before they fenced off the area behind Fort Point, I used to sit back behind there at night listening to the fog horns and water sloshing back and forth, the cool air and the smell. Sea water was great too. Great memories.
ANDY: Wow. I just went down there one night kind of on a lark to make this recording for Beckie so we could bring the fog horns with us. I never would have thought that other people would enjoy it. That never crossed my mind.
And I can say for sure there’s never been a negative comment. Everything’s positive, which is pretty rare these days.
So every time I look at the comments, or every time I listen to it myself, I'll think, “Boy, I did that. That's really neat.”
COMMENT VOICE 4: Thanks a lot for this. It's amazing how calming this is, rekindling the memories of the bridge and the headlands. I was on a bus going back to SF and as we crossed the bridge, there was a huge tanker passing directly under us. It was early morning, the sun had broken through the clouds over Oakland, illuminating the bridge towers and the tanker dramatically. The fog was slicing through the roadway like shimmering curtains. I thought I was in heaven.
COMMENT VOICE 5: My only connection here is that I drove across the Golden Gate Bridge once while on vacation. Still, though, this is a very nice recording, and I can see why people would get attached. Props to your father for making the recording, and thank you for posting it where people can access it for free.
COMMENT VOICE 6: Wow, this teleports me back to when I was four or five in the ‘50s, living on 16th Avenue. Oh, if I could roll back the clock. I also remember the smell of fog dew at night. What a great place to have lived.
COMMENT VOICE 7: The low pitched horns are still there, but the high pitched ones are completely different now. This sounds even better than the high ones they have now.
ANDY: One thing I haven't even followed is I don't even know what's happened to the fog horns. I'm sure the surf is the same, but they're different, and some of them don't play anymore.
REPORTER: The first sound that guided sailors into the San Francisco Bay was a fog cannon which went into operation in 1855.
Sound of fog cannon.
REPORTER: Then came the fog bell.
Sound of fog bell.
REPORTER: Then the steam whistles.
Sound of fog whistles.
REPORTER: Eventually we come to the diaphone.
Sound of diaphone fog horn.
REPORTER: At first, two tones, and then the single tone, which we still hear to this day.
Sound of single tone fog horn.
REPORTER: This is the sound we hear in Andy’s 1987 recording. The fog horns I heard for myself this year were yet again different.
So I'm driving over the Bay Bridge, and there's a thick bank of fog reaching its arms into the city. I'm feeling sort of sentimental, but the blanket of fog is comforting.
I made it out to Lands End. Beckie told me how to get to the spot where Andy took the recording, their favorite spot back when they lived here.
BECKIE: There's a little parking area in front of it, it's down from the main part of the Lincoln Park, and it has steps going down. And there's a couple little benches that you can sit on and just sit there and watch the surf in the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. It's just a beautiful little spot.
Sounds of ocean, fog horns, and walking.
REPORTER: Okay, so I'm heading down this dirt path. I think I see the benches that she's talking about. It's really dark, and the only light is from a house on the cliff nearby. The waves are getting louder and louder, along with the fog horns. It's as though the fog carries a sound differently, bringing it in right up close.
As I sit in this spot, I think, “Somehow, Andy captured something that he didn’t know would be fleeting, something he didn’t know would call to people across time.”
Sound of birds, cars, chatting
REPORTER: Sound is something we don’t think to take with us when packing our moving boxes, but when you hear your old neighborhood, in the languages spoken, the cars, the birds, the trees, something indescribable occurs. You go back there, through time, through space.
Sound of 2026 fog horns.
REPORTER: Much like Andy and Beckie, I’ll be leaving the city soon. I'm recording these horns with some hope that they will bring me some comfort down the line, the same way Andy's recording has for 1000s of people.
ANDY: There will be a time when people listen to it and don’t have those memories and I hope it is as pleasant for them.
It was pleasant then, and it’s pleasant now. It's a chance to bring back a better time in your life, or a pleasant time in your life, or a pleasant time in a life that maybe was unpleasant at times. It's remembering the good things about your past.
REPORTER: After hearing Andy’s recording so many times, listening to today’s horns, they really do sound different. They're quieter, less frequent. The horns in 1987 sound more distinct, they have their own personality.
Sound of 1987 fog horns.
REPORTER: Many horns have been taken out because of more updated navigational technology like radar and GPS.
Sound of 2026 fog horns.
REPORTER: I feel nostalgic for something I didn't even experience, for a time when the horns sang like a choir across the bay.
Sound of 1987 fog horns.
REPORTER: Now there are just a few solitary singers.
Sound of 2026 fog horns.
REPORTER: Sitting here, imagining the horns as giant whales out in the fog. I think of a story from Ray Bradbury:
REPORTER (reading): One day many years ago a man walked along and stood in the sound of the ocean on a cold sunless shore and said, "We need a voice to call across the water, to warn ships; I'll make one. I'll make a voice like all of time and all of the fog that ever was; I'll make a voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night long, and like an empty house when you open the door, and like trees in autumn with no leaves. A sound like the birds flying south, crying, and a sound like November wind and the sea on the hard, cold shore. I'll make a sound that's so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it will weep in their souls, and hearths will seem warmer, and being inside will seem better to all who hear it in the distant towns. I'll make me a sound and an apparatus and they'll call it a Fog Horn and whoever hears it will know the sadness of eternity and the briefness of life.
Sound of 2026 fog horns.
REPORTER: In San Francisco, I’m Stella Singer, for Crosscurrents.
You can find Andy’s recording by visiting these sites: YouTube
Soundcloud