By Dr. Larry Moses
No one asked me but…I have just returned from my annual baseball trip. Each year my sons and I select a weekend to take in as many major league baseball games as possible in a short trip.
This year we selected the San Francisco area. We got tickets for an Oakland A’s game and two San Francisco Giant Games.
The adventure is about the ball parks as much as the games. AT&T Park, home of the Giant’s, is magnificent. We were on the third deck and could easily look out over the San Francisco Bay. Large ocean going vessels sailed by during the evening. Two ferries came and docked outside the park off loading their passengers right at the gates of the ball park.
My favorite park, to date, is Petco Park in San Diego, but the Giant’s home park is great and its setting is unrivaled. It is worth the price of admission just to be in the park.
All of this being said, let’s talk about the city of San Francisco.The hotel we booked was a mile or so from the ball park and the accommodations were great. However, while walking the streets of San Francisco, I could not help but make a comparison to a similar setting in San Diego.
When compared to San Diego, San Francisco is a dump. Both cities took a rundown industrial part of the city and turned it into a magnificent ball park. However, San Diego went a step further understanding that, fairly or unfairly, an impression of the city would be carried away by the many people who visit the town for a ball game. They cleaned up the city around the ball park. San Francisco has made no such effort. After a day in downtown San Diego, where they have renovated old buildings into condos, one could see themselves living in the urban setting San Diego has created. This cannot be said for San Francisco.
San Francisco looks as if they built a great stadium and forgot about the neighborhood surrounding it. While at the game, there is no better setting. But one must eventually return to the streets where at night the doorways are filled with sleeping people, and the mentally deranged are walking down the street shouting obscenities. I was a day late for the Gay Pride Parade though I did get to see the guy with a pink Mohawk and striped hip huggers. I just wish he had worn his shirt, but the belly ring was a nice touch.
Knowledgeable Giants fans must stay outside the city as the Bay Area Rapid Transit off loads a large number of people at the park. Those people avoid the city environment surrounding AT&T.
A year ago, we made a similar walk in San Diego after the ball game and saw none of this on the streets. This is the district represented by none other than Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. I am willing to bet she doesn’t spend much time there. If she has the answer to the problems of America, maybe she should return home and start there. Gavin Newsom, the San Francisco mayor, needs to take some lessons from Oscar Goodman.
One of the most interesting events of the trip occurred in the morning when my son and I had left the hotel for the Jack in the Box located four blocks from the hotel. As we waited for a traffic light to change, a man pulled into what appeared to a parking spot in front of the fast food joint. There was a parking space painted on the street and a parking meter. Now the parking meter’s top was painted red. In the time it took for us to cross the street and the man to enter the restaurant to order breakfast, a parking cop and tow truck had his car hooked up. My son told him that his car was being towed, he left and we watched him talk to the parking cop. They unhooked his car and the tow truck drove off. Before we had our order he was back and explained that the cop still wrote him a seventy-five dollar ticket; however, he did explain that it would have been over five hundred dollars if the car had been towed. It was the most expensive egg sandwich he ever had.
But as quick as the action was, the parking enforcement officer had to be sitting on that meter. A San Francisco form of the speed trap; it was interesting to watch what appeared to be a legal ambush.
After one ride on the bus, we decided to walk. The fact the bus was covered with graffiti and looked like it had not been cleaned in a decade was not the deciding factor in our walking, because the streets were dirtier and filled with aggressive pan-handlers. The decision to walk was predicated by the fact the walk from the hotel to the bus stop and from the bus to the park was every bit as long as a direct walk from the hotel to the ball park.
Earlier in the day, part of our party had gone to the wharf area and some walked back and others decided to take the trolley back. The walkers were back to the hotel better than an hour before those who took the trolley – so much for rapid transit.
Would I go back for a game in San Francisco? You bet. But next time, I am going to stay outside the city and take the ferry to the ball games. What could be better than a ride across the bay and a ball game in AT&T Park?
Thought of the week…Where else but in San Francisco would characters such as Sister Boom-Boom, a transvestite who dresses in a mini-skirted nun’s habit, and a punk rocker named Jello Biafra run for seats on the Board of Supervisors?
JoAnne Davidson
Journalist
