Thinking about this, I've come to the realization that this new ambivalence could be geopolitically based. I've lived on the peninsula. That's a red state, brothers and sisters. Go to a basketball game at Maples sometime and look around in the non-student sections. You'll see what I mean.
The auslander owners of the Niners abandoning our fair city but still attempting to leverage its visual and cultural cache as their franchise's identity and mystique is a grubby little ruse and adds infuriating insult to the injury. Obviously, the Dumbarton Bridge is not the Golden Gate, we get it, but that's kind of the point, isn't it?
There is a distinct and unquestionable cultural boost to playing professional sports in San Francisco. We've seen it again and again with both the 49ers and, more recently, with the Giants. Huey Lewis and the News singing the anthem, Robin Williams, RIP, gassing up the crowd, Steve Perry hanging off a railing pantomiming "When the Lights Go Down in the CIty" and Tony Bennett describing precisely what the Niners have done with their heart as an organization are all as intimately "San Francisco", the cultural borders of which, arguably, extend through Marin Country to the north, as Rice-A-Roni and assless chaps. SF also boasts a fan base that won't flee their seats during a close game to avoid a sunburn.Remember when Josh Hamilton complained about all the weed he was smelling in the outfield during the Giants march to the title in the 2010 Series? Admit it, we all took that, and the championship, as a cultural victory over all Texans, but especially the followers of those demagogues of ignorance and bad pants the Bushies and Rick Perry and Ted Cruz, right? Try bustin' out your green at Levi's Stadium sometime. Those South Bay cops don't fool around, trust me.
It's easy to blame Gavin Newsome for losing the Niners by linking the new stadium to his crack-addled scheme to turn Hunter's Point into a yuppie Shangri-La, but the truth of the matter is that the Youngstown mob either didn't have a Larry Baer figure in the mix, or didn't want one. Had anyone with one tenth of Larry's resolve to keep the franchise in the city had any Yorky ears back then, the team would still be playing in town.So, in the spirit of the great Mr. Baer, I've been thinking about putting together a kickstarter campaign to raise one million dollars, which would fund a committee of San Francisco civic and business leaders researching,drafting and campaigning for a bond issue to make San Francisco the second U.S. city, after Green Bay Wisconsin to own it's own NFL franchise, the profits from which, would go to making the public schoolchildren of San Francisco the best-fed, best-taught and most supported public students in the world and to guarantee that every graduate of every public high school in the city would have the tuition money she or he needed to attend college.
(see Tangelo Park, Fla.)
The team could play in ATT park or a restored Kezar (how cool would that be?) while a new stadium was built. The numbers don't lie. NFL franchises are one of the best investments on earth even with the expense of a stadium factored in.
This committee could also look into whether it's possible for the city to claw back the name and colors from the current Ohio ownership group since their move makes them the NFL franchise playing the farthest, by twenty miles, from their name city, and the only one that actually plays and practices closer to another, larger, metropolitan area. San Jose Raiders, anyone? Is there any doubt that Marc Davis and his kin should sell that franchise for the good of all mankind?
The Doobie Brothers, Smashmouth, Asbestos Death and, on special occasions, the fabulous Miss Dionne Warwick should be firing up the South Bay crowd on game days, not Huey and Tony and Steve.
With all due respect to the great Alfred Korzybsky, sometimes the map IS the territory.
