It's tough to find much that went according to plan, let alone went remotely well, in the rollout of Levi's Stadium, the "San Francisco" 49ers' new suburban dream home.
The stadium is 38 miles south of San Francisco, and gridlock to and from games would require only a few oxcarts to resemble refugees fleeing Napoleon's conquering army. Its new grass, repeatedly and inexplicably, dried up and died. The team, in an apparent state of mutiny, has played mediocre ball; the hardest hits have, sadly, occurred in the stadium's men's rooms.
Video footage of a restroom brawl on Oct. 5 that left a man potentially paralyzed and hovering near death was yanked off YouTube for being overly "shocking and disgusting." This was not the first uploaded fistfight hosted by the $1.3 billion stadium; a vendor casually told freelance writer and sports enthusiast Daisy Barringer during the Sept. 28 contest vs. Philadelphia that beer sales had been curtailed early because the ballpark's jail was full (team officials could not confirm a jail-capacity-to-booze-cutoff nexus).
During the Oct. 5 game featuring the restroom melee that led to Dario and Amador Rebollero being charged with felonies, 20 other fans were arrested. Does Levi's Stadium have an unruly fans problem or an everyone's-got-a-camera-phone-now problem? The answer: Yes.
Per statistics provided by the San Francisco Police Department from 2008 to 2012, 22 arrests are a sizable total; that would have been the second-most at any Candlestick Park outing in 2012. In that season, 23 arrests were recorded on three separate occasions (vs. the Bills, Giants, and, intuitively, the hated Seahawks). Zero arrests were made against the Rams (the hated rivals of yesteryear), Bears, Dolphins, or Cardinals.
Older police statistics at the 'Stick, like the Niners' quality of play in that era, are sloppy and forgettable. But, between 2008 and 2010, no more than 17 arrests were made at any home game (perhaps fewer; the SFPD's recording method makes it very easy to double-count those charged with resisting arrest). The majority of arrests didn't involve men knocking each other out cold in arguments over who got to use the toilet but were violations of California Penal Code 647(f): public intoxication.
Levi's Stadium's astronomical entry costs mean it ostensibly caters to a different demographic than Candlestick Park used to. Fans ponying up hundreds of dollars more for a seat would, intuitively, be less likely to risk it all by behaving badly and being shown the door.
But the statistics aren't bearing out these assumptions. The 'Stick may have been a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but if ever you were looking for a reason to feel nostalgic — well, there you go.
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