Peter Hartlaub / The ChronicleĪfter I joined The Chronicle in 2000, the game-day tradition included meatball sandwiches at Tommy’s Joynt and a ride on the Candlestick Express, a booze cruise of a Muni line where any driver who skipped the freeway and took surface streets was treated like a hero. (We’ve had five generations of Hartlaubs and Leals sit in our seats.) Our family tickets were still in my grandfather’s name, Ray Leal, more than a decade after he died in 1996.Ĭhronicle culture critic Peter Hartlaub with family members Toni Hartlaub, Philip Hartlaub and Susan Leal at the last 49ers game at Candlestick Park, on Dec. We saw kids grow up, then pass the seats down to their children. They were mostly middle-class too, coming from all around the Bay Area and on long bus rides from Sacramento. We would ride up that long-as-hell Candlestick escalator to our seats, where we knew everyone who was seated around us. We would buy carnitas burritos from La Tapatia in South San Francisco and ride SamTrans to the game my mom always wanted to go to the gate where former roller derby star Ann Calvello took tickets. The good memories from that point are too plentiful to list and are tied to the story of my family and my life. But my family wasn’t going to waste one of our four 49ers seats in Upper Box Section 32 on me until I was old enough to sit through an entire game intently - and memorize the offensive line. The team was dreadful, and most of my friends were Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers fans. I always laugh when I see someone bring their infant to a baseball or football game. My first game was sometime around 1979 or 1980, when I was 9 years old. Young 49ers fans play in the infield during a 49ers-Bears game at Kezar Stadium in the 1950s. Any child who clipped a coupon from a carton of Christopher Milk in the 1950s could get into 49ers games for free. The very poorest residents might have balked at a $1.50 ticket, and the wealthiest San Franciscans might have thought it beneath them. There were fans walking from the Sunset, Richmond, Haight and Mission districts, like ants converging on a half-eaten bar of Pink Popcorn. Kezar was an accurate cross-section of the city, which you could see on game day. “Ladies had fur coats, because it was cold at Kezar Stadium.” They came from church,” my mother told me last week. There were no team apparal stores the only jerseys being worn were on the field. I know this from Chronicle archive photos and our family’s stories. The games were different in the early days, and not just the price. That’s considerably more than most Bay Area teachers (my wife’s and father’s professions), nurses (my mother’s profession), journalists, firefighters, bus drivers and small business owners can afford. Our seats for the upcoming Rams game cost more than $170 each including fees, which is almost $125 above what inflation should dictate. Our tickets were $14.50 each in 1982 plus a 50-cent fee. Peter Hartlaub / The Chronicleīut I think it’s telling about who will and will not be filling stadiums in the present and future. I don’t feel entitled to sit in upper box seats on the 5-yard-line (where both our Candlestick and Levi’s Stadium tickets have resided the last 50 years) for the rest of my life.Ĭandlestick Park season tickets from the Hartlaub family from 20. The 49ers, Warriors and Giants have the right to set their tickets at any price they want. It’s not something I feel particularly wounded about. The reasons are complicated, but come down to a simple concept: Pro sports tickets - especially season tickets - are no longer a luxury of the middle class. My mother and I have talked, and we’ve decided this will almost certainly be the last year for our 49ers season tickets. I’ve been thinking about that part of our family history, because it’s likely coming to an end. We stuck with the 49ers from Kezar Stadium to Candlestick Park to Levi’s Stadium, with season tickets getting passed down to my mother and aunt, and the next generations including me and my sons. Rooting for the 49ers and San Francisco Seals baseball team were a symbol of that. They loved their new country, and especially their city. Sports tickets were a huge luxury for my frugal grandmother who kept the books, but I’m guessing they were as much a part of their American dream as the job and the house.
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