The Santa Clara Super Bowl in San Francisco

A sculpture trumpeting the 50th Super Bowl has gone up in Civic Center. It is at the long end of the sandy waste which used to be a lawn before Mayor Gavin Newsom had it torn out in 2008 for a bogus Victory Garden for Chez Panisse's Alice Waters.



Mayor Ed Lee's administration has been coming up with similarly misguided ideas in anticipation of Super Bowl 50 (the NFL ditched the Roman numerals this year) to be played February 7th at the new Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara. Lee clumsily announced last August that the homeless "are going to have to leave San Francisco" for two weeks, and there was also a plan to tear down all the overhead Muni wires on Market Street leading to the Embarcadero so the proposed Super Bowl Entertainment Village would be more aesthetically pleasing. Thankfully, that multimillion dollar fiasco was averted when public outcry was strong and immediate.



The last time the Super Bowl was played in the Bay Area was Version XIX in 1985. It was held at Stanford Stadium because the NFL considered Candlestick Park too much of a shithole to host the high rollers. At least the game was good, with the San Francisco 49ers led by coach Bill Walsh and quarterback Joe Montana winning their second Super Bowl together over the Miami Dolphins of the Don Shula/Dan Marino era.

Currently, the 49ers have an idiot owner who recently fired an eccentric, winning coach who was doing amusing things with a charismatic backup quarterback, and the present team is woeful. They also moved out of town to a cursed stadium next to San Jose, which has not particularly endeared them to longstanding San Franciscans. Like Cassandra, I am feeling imminent disaster here, with the recent America's Cup mess as a template. If most of the weather forecasters are correct, February 7th should be smack in the middle of the El Niño storms which are expected to wallop us soon. This could be interesting.