SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- On Thursday afternoon, 21 days after the Super Bowl 50 Host Committee unveiled a 6-foot-tall, 8-foot-wide "50" statue in Alamo Square Park, 20 days after a Recreation and Park employee first had to scrub graffiti off it, 15 days after somebody painted "Evict Ed Lee" inside its massive zero, nine days after the words "SUPER BOWL 50" on its base were changed to spell "SUPERB OWL," six days after the 1,600-pound statue was knocked over in the middle of the night, five days after city workers came by to put it back up and four days after the sign, again shoved to the ground, was finally loaded into the back of a truck and driven away, a black SUV containing Arizona Cardinals running back David Johnson pulled up to Alamo Square.
Johnson was there to film a short sequence with NFL Films: a picnic in front of the Painted Ladies, an homage to Full House as part of a partnership with Nickelodeon. He was with Ike Shehadeh of Ike's Place, a popular sandwich shop in the Mission District, and a coterie of minders and NFL Films cameramen followed them up the hill to the bare spot where the giant "50" sat until a few days ago.
San Franciscans have made little effort to disguise their distaste for this month's Super Bowl festivities. A recent report showed that taxpayers are on the hook for more than $5 million in assorted transit, planning and security costs, for which they will not be reimbursed. Santa Clara, not San Francisco, negotiated to receive money from the league, with the expectation that the wave of visitors spending money in San Francisco's hotels and businesses would offset the city's expenses. City officials differ on the likelihood of that happening, and have taken to sparring in public. In recent days, road closures in downtown San Francisco have snarled traffic across the Bay Area. The city's homeless population, meanwhile, has been corralled out of the area where Super Bowl events are taking place, putting strain on a community already struggling with an unusually rainy winter.
The Super Bowl's "50" statues, which were planted across the city over the last month, have been a particular sticking point. The letters at City Hall's statue were rearranged to spell "SUP BRO." Twin Peaks became "UP R BOWEL." At the Palace of Fine Arts, the letters were used to write "LEE ROBS" before they were removed entirely. An attendant was hired to keep an eye on the "50" on Market Street.
Alamo Square's "50" saw the worst of it: an onslaught of graffiti and reletterings, the theft of its solar panels and some of its aluminum siding, and finally, the back-to-back topplings that convinced the host committee to remove it from the park. Asked if it would be replaced, a representative said only that it had been "fixed," and declined to elaborate.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. The statues were designed to get average San Franciscans excited about -- and hopefully involved in -- the NFL festivities. Two years ago, when Super Bowl XLVIII was played at the Meadowlands, New Yorkers mostly ignored the Super Bowl's New York-based events, the street fairs and celebrity-hosted parties. The league hoped to do better this time.
"You may remember that at the last New Orleans Super Bowl, they had giant footballs at various spots around the city, decorated by different artists," host committee chief executive and president Keith Bruce told the Mercury News in December. "We decided the large ’50’ images would be good here, sprinkled around the Bay Area."
The host committee has been quick to write off the destruction as mild vandalism. "These are temporary, whimsical reminders of Super Bowl week," a committee representative wrote when asked for comment. "People all over town are taking pictures with them. Generally they're very well received."
"We had one that seemed to be getting vandalized repeatedly, probably by the same person. It was a problem, so it was removed."
The narrative that the vandalism is the work of one person -- some no-good, meddling teen, no doubt -- is a tempting one. Kids mess with stuff, and the bigger, the shinier, the more grownup-sanctioned, the better.
But San Francisco's response to the "50" statues -- in particular, its repeated messages to the city's mayor -- has transcended that. With the Super Bowl 50 statues, the host committee hoped to remind the city of the event it's co-hosting. What they might not have intended to do was give San Franciscans a canvas on which to respond.
So, when the host committee threw in the towel at Alamo Square and removed the statue, many San Franciscans were elated. "Host rejects parasite," crowed the San Francisco Citizen.
And yet. As the NFL's entourage laid out a blanket scarcely 20 feet from where vandals wrote "OOPS" on the prone "50" statue just days ago, people seemed mostly pleased to see them. The shoot went uninterrupted: David Johnson and Ike ate, or mock-ate, sandwiches and ran through the grass as locals and tourists alike snapped pictures of them.
"Is he a football player?" asked a visitor from Australia, squinting at Johnson while the Goodyear blimp wafted overhead. "He looks like one."
Two NFL crew members hadn't heard about the Alamo Square vandalism at all.
"It was over here?" one asked, looking toward the Painted Ladies. "Wow."
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