Photo of homeless person in San FranciscoA Poem on San Francisco: ‘Even the 49ers Don’t Play There Anymore’ by James A. Tweedie The Society June 24, 2023 Culture, Poetry 13 Comments . Even the 49ers Don’t Play There Anymore Is San Francisco slip-sliding away? Old Navy, Nordstrom, Saks, the Gap, have all Closed stores—with Hilton in default—as they Abandon a once-thriving downtown mall. . With sidewalks strewn with needles, poop and tents, And smash and grab shoplifting city wide, Old businesses and long-time residents Face homelessness, assaults, and homicide. . Without police, Saint Francis is on call, For it will take a miracle to halt The city’s slow but steady downward fall. The blame? It isn’t San Andreas’ fault! . How broken? CNN now fears to air Live news from once-genteel Union Square. . . James A. Tweedie is a retired pastor living in Long Beach, Washington. He has written and published six novels, one collection of short stories, and three collections of poetry including Mostly Sonnets, all with Dunecrest Press. His poems have been published nationally and internationally in The Lyric, Poetry Salzburg (Austria) Review, California Quarterly, Asses of Parnassus, Lighten Up Online, Better than Starbucks, Dwell Time, Light, Deronda Review, The Road Not Taken, Fevers of the Mind, Sparks of Calliope, Dancing Poetry, WestWard Quarterly, Society of Classical Poets, and The Chained Muse. He was honored with being chosen as the winner of the 2021 SCP International Poetry Competition. NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets. The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary. 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All those iconic buildings and topography (and car chases) we recall from Hollywood films, and yet downtown and elsewhere the glamour grows thin. In time, I expect San Francisco will gentrify and regenerate like many cities before it, but in the meantime, yes, I’ve seen the reports and the situation is grim. A fine sonnet that hopefully will one day soon be reflecting a sad era of history and of social issues addressed. Thanks for the read, James. Reply James A. Tweedie June 25, 2023 Paul, when I was growing up in an unincorporated section of Daly City I could see the tops of the Holden Gate bridge from my bedroom window. I spent six years attending San Francisco State College, did volunteer summer children’s ministries for two years in Chinatown (where I commuted each day to the top of Nob Hill on the Powell Street cable car) and the outer Mission District and served a city church in the Portalhurst district for two years as youth pastor and worked for six years in a public library that included a branch next door to the San Francisco Cow Palace (where I saw Nate Thurmond and the Warriors play basketball, Peggy Fleming skate in exhibition and the SF Seals NHL farm team play hockey). I am old enough to have seen Willie Mays and the Giants play at the old Seals Stadium (and Candlestick Park where I saw him hit two home runs in one game, saw Marichal and Koufax go head to head and sat through a 7-hour 23-inning afternoon Memorial Day game that ended after midnight) and see the 49ers play at Kezar Stadium, listen to Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops while sitting on the grass at Stern Grove, and Virgil Fix perform on the organ soon after the new St. Mary’s Cathedral was built, took my future wife to her Senior Prom held in the City’s Bank of America building, and am very old enough to have played in the Funhouse at Playland-at-the-Beach amusement park, see the inside of Sutro Baths, see a movie in the old Fix Theater movie palace, and ride a car ferry across San Francisco Bay from Oakland under the Bay Bridge. I mention all this trivia to demonstrate that I know and love the city of San Francisco with all my heart. I knew it by heart and took hundreds of inner city children to city parks on city busses for two summers. I watched it grow from a great city into an even greater city. And now, I would be afraid to walk through many of the areas where I once roamed both freely and safely. In short, it was painful for me to write this poem and I join you I the hope that San Francisco (not to mention Seattle, West- and Southside Chicago and LA—where my brother was recently rear-ended by a hit-and-run driver and told by a police officer that they don’t respond to misdemeanor’s any more and that he’ll have to file an online report) will someday and somehow be redeemed from metastasized homeless, rampant/flagrant/epidemic/public drug abuse. And un-prosecuted violent crime. Hope is cheap, however and pushing against historic levels of nation-wide social disintegration will require a moral vision and the marshaling of community and law-enforcement to a degree that currently far exceeds what politicians and the general public are (at the moment) willing or able to raise. Even so, I hope. Reply Roy Eugene Peterson June 25, 2023 Wow! Thank you not only for the great, though intrinsically sad poem, but also for your personal story that makes the words of the poem even more grim. Hope for change seems dim for the moment, but I suspect someday a massive change will regenerate this formerly great city. Joshua C. Frank June 25, 2023 I’m from the Bay Area and commuted into San Francisco every weekday for seven years, and I can assure anyone reading that this is a perfect description of what San Francisco has become. You’ve conveyed it well within the short space of a sonnet. Reply Joseph S. Salemi June 25, 2023 Nothing will change in San Francisco (or any of the other urban nightmares than resemble it) as long as people in those places keep on voting for left-liberal Democrats. Richard Weaver said that “ideas have consequences.” And stupid ideas produce stupid voters. Reply Julian D. Woodruff June 25, 2023 Very well said, Mr. Tweedie. I agree 99%: I’d say the decline has been pretty rapid. I grew up across the bay in Berkeley and share some of the experiences you mention in your comment. After spending to put Bay Area Rapid Transit underground, staving off the freeway developers wanted to run through town, and similar efforts countering the trashing of their city, what do SF residents have to show for their regard for it now? Reply Cheryl Corey June 25, 2023 I guess that a city, like an addict, has to hit rock bottom before anything changes. Reply C.B. Anderson June 25, 2023 Now that the gold is gone, there is no good reason for the Forty-niners to stick around. It would be fair to say that SF is the very model of cultural decay. It would not pain me to learn that California had decided to secede. Places like SF should be quarantine, lest the sickness spread even further. Reply Warren Bonham June 25, 2023 I thought they had hit rock bottom years ago but they haven’t started to pull out of their tail spin yet. A great but tragic commentary. Reply Christopher Lindsay June 26, 2023 I enjoyed this poem. Is it a sonnet? San Francisco’s politicians are destroying their city. Will they change their ways? Reply James A. Tweedie August 23, 2023 My apologies, Christ4opher, for not noting your comment earlier. To answer your question, “Yes,” the poem is written in the form of an English, or Shakespearian, sonnet. Reply Leave a Reply Cancel ReplyYour email address will not be published.CommentName* Email* Website Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. Δ This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. 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Cynthia Erlandson June 24, 2023 You’ve written a poetically beautiful and truthful portrait of ugliness and sadness, James, which is a great trick. Your line about St. Francis, and especially your pun about the San Andreas “fault” are both wonderfully clever, and needed by this poem. Reply
Paul Freeman June 25, 2023 I watched ‘The Rock’, yesterday, set mostly in and around San Francisco – not Gibraltar. All those iconic buildings and topography (and car chases) we recall from Hollywood films, and yet downtown and elsewhere the glamour grows thin. In time, I expect San Francisco will gentrify and regenerate like many cities before it, but in the meantime, yes, I’ve seen the reports and the situation is grim. A fine sonnet that hopefully will one day soon be reflecting a sad era of history and of social issues addressed. Thanks for the read, James. Reply
James A. Tweedie June 25, 2023 Paul, when I was growing up in an unincorporated section of Daly City I could see the tops of the Holden Gate bridge from my bedroom window. I spent six years attending San Francisco State College, did volunteer summer children’s ministries for two years in Chinatown (where I commuted each day to the top of Nob Hill on the Powell Street cable car) and the outer Mission District and served a city church in the Portalhurst district for two years as youth pastor and worked for six years in a public library that included a branch next door to the San Francisco Cow Palace (where I saw Nate Thurmond and the Warriors play basketball, Peggy Fleming skate in exhibition and the SF Seals NHL farm team play hockey). I am old enough to have seen Willie Mays and the Giants play at the old Seals Stadium (and Candlestick Park where I saw him hit two home runs in one game, saw Marichal and Koufax go head to head and sat through a 7-hour 23-inning afternoon Memorial Day game that ended after midnight) and see the 49ers play at Kezar Stadium, listen to Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops while sitting on the grass at Stern Grove, and Virgil Fix perform on the organ soon after the new St. Mary’s Cathedral was built, took my future wife to her Senior Prom held in the City’s Bank of America building, and am very old enough to have played in the Funhouse at Playland-at-the-Beach amusement park, see the inside of Sutro Baths, see a movie in the old Fix Theater movie palace, and ride a car ferry across San Francisco Bay from Oakland under the Bay Bridge. I mention all this trivia to demonstrate that I know and love the city of San Francisco with all my heart. I knew it by heart and took hundreds of inner city children to city parks on city busses for two summers. I watched it grow from a great city into an even greater city. And now, I would be afraid to walk through many of the areas where I once roamed both freely and safely. In short, it was painful for me to write this poem and I join you I the hope that San Francisco (not to mention Seattle, West- and Southside Chicago and LA—where my brother was recently rear-ended by a hit-and-run driver and told by a police officer that they don’t respond to misdemeanor’s any more and that he’ll have to file an online report) will someday and somehow be redeemed from metastasized homeless, rampant/flagrant/epidemic/public drug abuse. And un-prosecuted violent crime. Hope is cheap, however and pushing against historic levels of nation-wide social disintegration will require a moral vision and the marshaling of community and law-enforcement to a degree that currently far exceeds what politicians and the general public are (at the moment) willing or able to raise. Even so, I hope. Reply
Roy Eugene Peterson June 25, 2023 Wow! Thank you not only for the great, though intrinsically sad poem, but also for your personal story that makes the words of the poem even more grim. Hope for change seems dim for the moment, but I suspect someday a massive change will regenerate this formerly great city.
Joshua C. Frank June 25, 2023 I’m from the Bay Area and commuted into San Francisco every weekday for seven years, and I can assure anyone reading that this is a perfect description of what San Francisco has become. You’ve conveyed it well within the short space of a sonnet. Reply
Joseph S. Salemi June 25, 2023 Nothing will change in San Francisco (or any of the other urban nightmares than resemble it) as long as people in those places keep on voting for left-liberal Democrats. Richard Weaver said that “ideas have consequences.” And stupid ideas produce stupid voters. Reply
Julian D. Woodruff June 25, 2023 Very well said, Mr. Tweedie. I agree 99%: I’d say the decline has been pretty rapid. I grew up across the bay in Berkeley and share some of the experiences you mention in your comment. After spending to put Bay Area Rapid Transit underground, staving off the freeway developers wanted to run through town, and similar efforts countering the trashing of their city, what do SF residents have to show for their regard for it now? Reply
Cheryl Corey June 25, 2023 I guess that a city, like an addict, has to hit rock bottom before anything changes. Reply
C.B. Anderson June 25, 2023 Now that the gold is gone, there is no good reason for the Forty-niners to stick around. It would be fair to say that SF is the very model of cultural decay. It would not pain me to learn that California had decided to secede. Places like SF should be quarantine, lest the sickness spread even further. Reply
Warren Bonham June 25, 2023 I thought they had hit rock bottom years ago but they haven’t started to pull out of their tail spin yet. A great but tragic commentary. Reply
Christopher Lindsay June 26, 2023 I enjoyed this poem. Is it a sonnet? San Francisco’s politicians are destroying their city. Will they change their ways? Reply
James A. Tweedie August 23, 2023 My apologies, Christ4opher, for not noting your comment earlier. To answer your question, “Yes,” the poem is written in the form of an English, or Shakespearian, sonnet. Reply
