With 49ers mania at a fever pitch as the weekend approaches, you might want to bookmark this Slate piece written by John Upton for when the Super Bowl sugar-high subsides. It chronicles how San Francisco’s political leaders fumbled the chance to keep the team here, with special emphasis on the role of former mayor and now lieutenant governor Gavin Newsom. An excerpt:
The team’s departure is just one of many signs that in San Francisco, the times they are a-changin’. Blacks are evacuating the city. Artists and working class families who can no longer afford the rents are resettling eastward in Oakland and beyond. Entire apartment buildings have been turned into dorms for rich kids studying at the Academy of Art University, while city planners have refused to enforce zoning rules that could have saved the rent-controlled homes. Homeless people, hippies, junkies, and smalltime pot dealers are being arrested and chased out of town by cops at the behest of billionaire bankers and dainty dot-commers.
Image: CBS News
