San Francisco

I’ve never considered myself a trend-setter. I am many things, but “hip” has never been one of them (I wonder, in fact, who would describe him or herself as a really hip person, because it just sounds like a really un-hip thing to say). My style of dress is not what you would call “fashion-forward,” and I’ve never really been the guy who knows where all the cool parties are happening.

However, there is an ironic side to being unfashionable: every now and then, something that you’ve been a fan of despite its obscurity suddenly becomes wildly popular. Nevertheless, there have been a handful of times when I’ve been into something before there was a bandwagon to jump on. Not that many – few enough that I feel compelled to declare them for the record (such as it is) in a series of posts here at C&B, lest they go unrecognized. Here then is Part One of my …uh, not-too-many-part series:

THINGS I LIKED BEFORE THEY WERE TRENDY

Some people say the
initials are really an
homage to 1950′s radio
comedian Stan Freberg.
Those people are idiots.

The San Francisco 49ers. I’ve been a football fan since as far back into my childhood as I can remember – and I can remember pretty far back. For a little kid like me who loved football, and had sworn his lifelong rooting allegiance to the 49ers (I believe the ceremony involved trading away a Larry Csonka football card for one of San Francisco’s Gene Washington), the infrequency of their victories could be written off as bad luck. In retrospect, I was indeed unlucky to have had to endure the mediocre Jim Plunkett – Delvin Williams years, not to mention the downright craptacular Steve DeBerg years. Some other kids I knew began discreetly shifting alliances and declaring themselves as Oakland Raiders fans, an idea that never made sense to me. Oakland was all the way on the other side of the Bay, and the team and its fans wore black and rode Harleys. They did win more games than the Niners (e.g. the 1980 Super Bowl), but whatever.

One day in 1981 (the exact calendar date is disputed), the Bay Area woke up to find that the Niners were suddenly and inexplicably awesome. We looked on in surprise and delight as they carved up the opposition, winning the NFC West Division with a record of 13-3 and powering through their divisional playoff game. Thereafter came the chilly January evening in 1982 when the Niners announced the beginning of their era of dominance: just when it seemed that they would fall short, the 49ers rallied in the final minutes of the NFC Championship game to take down the hated Dallas Cowboys on the play now famous as “The Catch.” The subsequent Super Bowl would be the first of four that the Niners won by the end of the decade, led by eventual Hall of Fame members Joe Montana, Ronnie Lott, Steve Young (OK fine, he was really more from the 1990′s), and, in a few more years, Jerry Rice.

Super Bowl XXIII, January 22, 1989. I’d
been a Niners fan for well over a decade.

Residual elements of the team’s greatness lasted (albeit in diminishing levels) all the way into the new century. Sadly, the decline continued, and by the 2004 season the 49ers had reattained their late-’70s standard of suckitude. So although I was a 49er fan before it was in style, I remain one now that it’s back out of style – the team and I returning, Magellan-like, to our point of origin, our revered captain slain (OK, retired) and the few remaining crew barely alive. Yes, you heard me – Dennis Erickson gave my team scurvy. There, I said it!

Check back tomorrow of Part Two of the BEFORE IT WAS TRENDY miniseries. Who knows, maybe I’ll over-extend another historical metaphor.