San Fran Becomes Playground for Elites

A sportswriter shocked by the recent shooting of a Giants fan in the parking lot outside Dodger Stadium inadvertently touched on one of California's most important, yet underreported demographic trends.

"It used to be the fans in San Francisco who were fools," wrote the L.A. Times' Bill Plaschke. "The battery throwers? The Tom Lasorda haters?... And while construction of a pricey new San Francisco ballpark eliminated some of those Candlestick cretins, the Dodger Stadium crowd has simply grown angrier and more frustrated."

In one respect, his lament is unquestionably true. In the late 1990s, when the Giants still played in decrepit Candlestick, the cold malevolence could be terrifying. I once sat through a painful late season Dodger loss in almost complete silence, fearful of what the tattooed, boozy crowd around me might do to a traitor in their midst.

Recently I chanced on some corporate tickets to perennially sold-out PacBell Park, the Giants' sparkling new home on the south side of the city. I went to the game thinking I'd see a West Coast version of venerable Fenway Park in Boston, or Baltimore's cozy Camden Yards.

To be sure, the architecture was impressive. And there was no Candlestick-like undercurrent of hostility. But the stadium was chock full of cell phones, seven-dollar hot dogs, and well-off baby-boomers with well-toned girlfriends. The stands were eerily devoid of kids happily savoring their favorite players, or a bag of peanuts.

Far from a classic baseball shrine, the ballpark had the ambience of a pleated chino.

The Bay Area's striking baseball transformation helps explain one of California's most puzzling mysteries. Since the fake "new economy" collapsed of its own absurdity in late 2000, greater San Francisco suffered far steeper job losses than did Los Angeles in the early 1990s. However, San Francisco seems disinterested in changing the trend.

I can recall how a major San Francisco developer, a Democrat party heavy contributor that had been invited to a conference in Washington, D.C., summed up his view of the state at that time: "Northern California is great, central California is fine, but there's just nothing we can do about the south."

Now his beloved Bay Area is in an economic sinkhole far deeper than the setbacks Southern California endured in the wake of the federal defense cutbacks. Yet, there's no despair among the region's elites, no sense of crisis or bold new responses. San Francisco politicians, led by state senator John Burton, remain committed to one of the most anti-business legislative agendas ever mounted in California. And, amidst all this, it's standing room only at PacBell Park.

What's happened is that the Bay Area rediscovered its historic propensity to ensure the comfort and perquisites of the privileged by driving up costs and driving out those of lesser means. Oakland was essentially created decades ago by the purging of minorities from San Francisco. Today, perpetual housing shortages and staggeringly capricious rules and regulations accomplish much the same result.

San Francisco now has one of the fastest outmigrations in the country, including the largest loss of African American residents among all of America's urban areas since 1990. More striking still, it is increasingly childless. Fewer than 15% of greater San Francisco residents are 18-years old or younger, half the national average. Most of the region's households are comprised of adults that spend their pooled incomes on themselves. Those who would raise and invest in successor generations have been all but totally priced out of the market.

So the Bay Area recession turns out to be a blessing for aging baby boomers. It has ruthlessly weeded out the pesky working and middle classes and often annoying, demanding families with children. It left behind a less crowded metropolis, bristling with elegant playgrounds like PacBell Park, exclusively dedicated to their needs and whims.

Is this sort of clean, sharply exclusive Disneyland really the preferred model for our state? Confronted with the seemingly volatile cultural and economic mix that abounds in most of the rest of California, including Dodger Stadium, many may yearn for its apparent safety. Part of the recall is about choosing among these different visions of our future.

I later learned that, at the very same game I attended, a Giants fan had dropped his sunglasses over PacBell Park's right field wall. Determined to retrieve his shades, and possibly fueled by the ballpark's designer beer, he tried to jump to a nearby light post. He missed, and fell, dying at the base of the wall even as thousands of Giants fans were cheering their team's new divisional championship.

It's tempting to think that life's uncertainties can be whittled down to a safe, predictable core. Yet, sometimes even the most comfortable surroundings just can't save people from themselves.