SPORTS: Good riddance to city’s sports teams – Valleywag

SPORTS: Good riddance to city’s sports teams – Valleywag:

Getting to and from work on a game day means chosing between clogged streets and overstuffed trains. Parking on my block flips from $12 to $40 for the day. Lunch spots overflow with people unclear on the concept that I’ve got a meeting in thirty minutes. City Hall’s zoning screwup is obvious: The Giants are their own economic sector, yet none of the Internet or biotech professionals who pack the neighborhood productively go to their games.

San Francisco has built a lovely park with killer views and free Wi-Fi on the most enviable waterfront spot in the world. I’m sure the new Googlers on the block could do a lot with it, if only it weren’t already booked for a bunch of sports. Please, will somebody in the Valley buy the Giants?

God, I love NIMBYism, and San Francisco has a life achievement award.

I’ll bet Paul hasn’t even stopped to think that a number of those lunch spots he likes would go under if the stadium moved. Worse still with Google moving in (or taking over the stadium) because they bring in their own cafeteria and cooks and their staff tend not to leave the building for meals nearly as often, further causing a negative hit on the economy around their campuses.

but it’d be nice and quiet (and poor, and no longer gentrifying, but starting the next round of urban decay), which is, I guess what he wants. As long as he gets what he wants, what others want are merely hassles.

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  • http://www.sharkspage.com PJ

    Pac Bell Park, or whatever it is called now, used to be a bunch of rundown warehouses and commerical buildings. Every time I passed by an alley on the way to a friends plant nursery, I thought this is where all the fight scenes in a karate movie would take place.
    It was only a matter of time before the housing crunch took hold, and the local politicians and developers should actually get credit for providing a few affordable housing units in a lot of the newer buildings. The farmers market and waterfront shops also draw a lot of locals who have nothing to do with baseball. Before it was abandoned shopping carts, car parts, and dumped trash.
    I have to weigh the positive and negatives of Google’s takeover of Shoreline in Mountain View as well. They generate a lot of tax revenue for the district, but almost seem to be a blight on the area.
    It is easy to bash the NIMBY rants, but I think any influx of people can be judged by how much they contribute to the local community. Google came with large expectations, but have not lived up to their corporate image, and yet expectations of what they would bring to SF are high as well.