San Francisco City Hall has been lit blue and gold this week, and the reasons were mysterious. "Is UC Berkeley in the football playoffs?" my partner Tony asked, and I told him no, it was not football season and they wouldn't be lighting it for Cal anyway.
According to Jim Herd at SF Citizen, the lighting is all about the Golden State Warriors making it to the first round of the NBA playoffs. He thinks it's a presumptuous, in-your-face gesture since San Francisco is "stealing" the Golden State Warriors from Oakland, and putting the team into a controversial new arena on the Embarcadero waterfront.
In any case, it's a pretty color scheme for City Hall, and since the NBA playoffs can stretch for many weeks, it may become the de facto decorative scheme of Civic Center. For those who would like to join the Warriors bandwagon in their first playoff games since 2007, Peter Hartlaub has a funny guide at SFGate.
Thanks for explaining this. I thought of UC Berkeley immediately as well, but couldn't make sense of it.
ReplyDeleteIt's all about winning the Embarcadero arena vote likely to happen in the fall -- as ugly a fight as any since the Candlestick stadium referendum in 1997. It will be interesting. The argument is that the waterfront needs no more obstructing edifices and that there are other transit usable sites.
ReplyDeleteDear Jan: I don't have a problem with an edifice on the waterfront as long as it's a public space, and this would be used for concerts as well as basketball games. The problem that I have heard is that Mayor Lee is giving the city treasury away again to private interests and that it's a terribly negotiated deal which will be screwing SF taxpayers again. Yep, here we go again.
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