If you were like your humble narrator, you were, on Sunday, Feb. 3 of last year figuring out
exactly how to leap off a chair and onto the couch so as to land on the most possible people after the 49ers scored the late, go-ahead touchdown to win the Super Bowl.
Well,
that leap never occurred.
And now the team is an utter and total mess, a mutinous sub-mediocrity roiled with internal rancor, domestic violence allegations, and terrible, terrible play. The team looked awful yesterday in losing a "road" game in Oakland, which is actually far, far closer to San Francisco than their Santa Clara home. But merely losing a game — and, in all likelihood, writing off the season — would be a lot less irksome of the team wasn't so toxic. Coach Jim Harbaugh is counting the days; his pro wrestler persona is a lot less fun when the team is openly rebelling against him.
Former child prodigy quarterback Colin Kaepernick is teetering between the Gary Coleman former child prodigy path or the Neil Patrick Harris route. As far as his relatability, he's taken to
giving photographers the Sean Penn treatment and answering questions in monotone, monosyllabic bleats.
If you can overlook the fact that the
Niners enticed a far-off municipality to fund their new, $1.3 billion football and
fan brawl palace and are no longer a San Francisco team per se, their quick trip to the gutter seems all too fitting for San Francisco's current idiom. Things here tend to go really well. Until they don't. And then they go really badly.
It's getting to be repetitive, but some things are worth repeating:
San Francisco's income iniquity is on par with Rwanda's. We've been
reporting about it for years, but, hey, what the hell: This is a city that is rapidly bifurcating into a population of very affluent people, and an underclass of needy people (and servers). There is, increasingly, no middle ground.
Skyrocketing average incomes in San Francisco and its surrounding counties are often indicators of the haves having a lot more.
So, the 49ers' swing from one extreme to another extreme seems about right. As does the boom-and-bust pendulum pattern the San Francisco Giants have fallen into: Even years bring World Series titles, odd years bring transcendently mediocre play, at best.
But the good times ... they're
so good. And, if ever you needed more reasons to enjoy the fleeting moments, well, there you go.
