For whatever reason, I always have a city/state that I really dislike at any given time. Sometimes, it’s because the place is a dirty cesspool (New Jersey), sometimes it’s because I have bad associations with it (Baltimore), sometimes I find that it’s a horrible place in almost all aspects (Miami), and sometimes it has things to do with sports mostly (Philadelphia).
I was watching MLB Network this morning, and it brought me an inordinate amount of satisfaction watching the Giants lose to the lowly Marlins. The defending World Series champions losing to one of the most historically bad teams ever drew a sadistic joy to me somewhere in my head. It dawned on me that it wasn’t just this game, but in just about every instance where I see highlights with the Giants coming out on the losing side, it kind of makes me happy.
Without question, my least favorite team in baseball has got to be the Giants. Even more than the Phillies, who have plagued the Braves over the last few years before age and a slew of bad contracts have finally caught up to them, making them one of the laughing stocks of Major League Baseball at the moment. But because they’re so pitiful this year, it’s like it’s not nearly as gratifying as it used to be to root against them. I still find pleasure in whenever the Braves have had their way with the Phillies this season, but it’s not quite the same, because the stakes aren’t high enough, with Phillies being so out of the race.
But the Giants, the defending World Series champions, and World Series champions of two of the last three years, I love watching them lose. But it doesn’t really stop there, when I look back to this past Super Bowl, I remember stating that everyone was fucked with a Baltimore vs. San Francisco matchup, because both teams sucked, but when I look back at it, I’m glad that the Ravens won, and not the 49ers. It was kind of one of those “devil you know as opposed to the one you don’t” situations, and ironically became preferable that a team with an accused murderer winning over the team from San Francisco.
So to cut to the chase, the bottom line is that San Francisco has become my new least favorite city. A lot of it definitely has to do with sports, but I also think back to my visit out to the bay a year ago, and how mostly unimpressed I was with it as a whole. The Giants’ ballpark was expensive and overrated and was a good representation of the rest of the city. The best part of the entire trip was the evenings spent driving out to Modesto for minor league baseball, as well as seeing the ballpark in Oakland on the other side of the bay. I had one fantastic burrito, but the rest of the place was completely overrated.
Giants fans also seemed like a good representation of the people of San Francisco too – a bunch of smarmy front-runners who love that the team is good and that it’s a cool place to be, but not actually care about the team. The game I went to was deliberately selected because it was a supposed “rivalry” game between the Giants and the cross-bay Oakland A’s. To no surprise, the fans packed the house, but it’s like the Giants fans didn’t care about the game at all, but rather that it was a hot ticket and they were glad to be there. This was no more apparent than when the A’s began throttling the Giants, and going into the ninth inning, instead a bunch of downtrodden Giants fans, were a bunch of ambivalent scenesters who went ballistic when the jumbotron put on the Fist Pump-Cam, who went bonkers throwing their fists up in the air while their team was getting owned by their rivals. Personally, I felt embarrassed to be there.
Fans of Philadelphia sports are no less front-running bandwagoners like San Franciscans are, but the difference is that when Philly sports teams begin to suck, the hardcore fans who actually stay accept their suckiness and are capable of living with it, and are willing to ride the storms and stay on board until they may or may not become good again. The same can’t really be said about San Franciscans, and although they might continue to show up to the ballpark, it’s because it’s the cool place where they can wear their panda hats and stupid Nike “hair” shirts (despite Lincecum cutting off his locks and Brian Wilson joining the “arch-nemesis” Dodgers)
In conclusion, San Francisco sucks. Surpassing the ranks of Philadelphia, New Jersey, Baltimore and Miami, the overrated city of arrogant hipsters and smarmy tech know-it-alls has become my least favorite place in America, and will become the butt of all my regional jokes as often as I can make it happen. Not even the site of Full House or the best burrito I’ve ever had can save them from this fate.
