49ers Commence To Stick Knife In the City of San Francisco

In the words of Fred Simmons, I'm a a little ticked off and I'm pretty much pissed.

According to the San Jose Merc. and Field of Schemes, sometime later today the city of Santa Clara is scheduled to release it's "term sheet" for plans to finance a new stadium for the 49ers. Not that this is really news; it just gives me an excuse to expound my thoughts on the matter.

A brief history: The Niners have been publicly itching to get out of Candlestick since the Yorks took over the franchise at the beginning of the decade, and after plans to build a new stadium on the old Candlestick site -- which included the laughably delusional project of gentrifying Hunter's Point,* a-la China Basin -- were booed off the proverbial stage like a troupe of thespian queers performing a Hairspray medley at a high school talent show, the Yorks turned their sights on Santa Clara County. That was ca. 2006. Since then, plans have stalled. The Yorks hemmed and hawed about the initial deal. Santa Clara city officials attacked county officials, who went after state officials, who prodded Oakland A's officials, who liked what they saw in Santa Clara County, whose officials then backed down from Santa Clara city officials, who then re-upped on their original offer to the Yorks, which head going-over pissed-off the county officials, who then tried to put the kabosh on the Niners deal in favor of an A's deal, who then threatened to go to North Carolina, which took all the leverage away from Santa Clara city officials, who then threatened to rescind their offer to the Niners entirely... -- bureaucratic bullshit, begets bureaucratic bullshit, ad infinitum.

Then the economy got its nuts in a vice and the rumors became whispers and the whispers just a lot of prattle that no one bothered to notice. Until...

Apparently there were some elections a few months back. Who knew? In January, newly tapped Santa Clara city officials began having "secret" meeting with the Yorks, spearheaded by Vice Mayor Jamie Matthews (dude or broad? It's unclear) to nail down a deal that would be the 49ers in Santa Clara by the 2014 season. Back on May 20th -- seemingly out of nowhere -- a deal was provisionally put forth in which a $900 million dollar venue would be constructed on a track of dirt a few miles north of Great America, land in fact owned by Great America and not the city of Santa Clara. Part of the deal then, would require that the 49ers actually buy Great America Theme Park from the Ohio based-company that now owns it, along with all of its adjoining properties.

For its part, the city of Santa Clara has offered to spend roughly $90 mil to subsidize the stadium (or 10%), which it plans to gouge from the thinning pockets of city taxpayers -- business owners, the self-employed, the self-loathing, shopkeepers, zookeepers, hoteliers, sommeliers, gondoliers, et al. The provisional deal has all the earmarks of the usual fuck the fan in the ass public subsidy structure these new stadium have come to rely on (though it's relatively tame in comparison to the gangbang rapings administered upon the raw sphincters of the cities of Miami by Jeffrey Lauria and Washington DC by the prigs running the show for the Nats).

But really, I don't give a shit about the poor schmucks in Santa Clara. What pisses me off about this deal is the very fact that the Niners are leaving town in the first place. York Family, let me confront you with a direct query: What gives you the goddamn right to move the SAN FRANCISCO 49ers out of fucking San Francisco? That shit just ain't right. It's not kosher. Know what I mean?

According to Google maps it's only 31 miles from Candlestick Park to where the new stadium would be in Santa Clara. That's about a 41 minute drive. Really, it's not all that far. Same state. Same basic region. But fuck, man. Do I really need to articulate this? The South Bay is a fucking septic tank for the rest of the metropolis.** When the fine folks of Oakland, SF, and the very idyllic East Bay take a shit, it trickles into the water supply, heads south, and ends up on the doorstep of the South Bay. It's gravity. Shit runs down-stream. That's all I'm saying.

On the other hand, I personally go to about one game a year. If the South Bay is a septic tank, Candlestick Park is a fucking warhead sized hemmorhoid bulging out of the Bay Area's asshole. Any change -- any relocation that is -- is an improvement over the status-quo. So, I guess, in that sense, I'm not all that pissed. Yeah, Santa Clara is lame as hell, but I'd sooner drive for two hours behind 3 billion semis going down 880, than work the side-streets of Hunter's Point trying to find a place to park. I mention this, because I'm fair.

That said, fuck the Yorks one more time. How dare you go behind our backs, greasing the palms of the quislings in Santa Clara, never once -- never fucking once -- tugging any strings in SF to get a new stadium built in the city. It kinda pisses me off, as I've iterated enough times in the post to make the point unequivocal. I guess this all comes back to Lord Greenback. The Giants have a monopoly on China Basin, and there's no way in the great-wide cosmos they're gonna let the Niners in on the action. So where else in SF is there, that wouldn't either raise the ire of the cum-guzzling, effete city-council, or end up costing the Yorks about a billion bucks? (I say we turn Alcatraz into the new stadium and let the opposing team use and old cell-block for a locker room. Talk a bout a mind-fuck.)

Hence, you get a new stadium in faceless, personality-less, historyless, bland, boring, why the hell would I travel to that particular place on this particular Sunday when I can just watch the game on my couch where beer costs fifty-cents, I don't have to pay for parking, and I can jerk-off at half-time and nobody will be the wiser, Santa fucking Clara. Where do I sign up for season tickets?

*Give me a fucking break. According to Wikipedia, the proposed Hunter's Point 49ers venue was to be, "zoned for retail space and housing; the new stadium was to be combined with such elements, bringing much-needed attractions to the historically blighted neighborhood of Hunters Point." Whoever thought this was a passable idea, obviously never saw the movie Straight Outta Hunter's Point. They'd be better off trying to re-zone Darfur.

**You think I'm just pulling this out of my ass? Think again. Here's an empirical point of reference: I have exactly one friend from the South Bay and he's the biggest fucking idiot I know. And he's a Yankees fan. Need I say more?