Hmm. Didn't Vivek do the same thing recently? Basically sell off his company to have cash on hand/shift it into other investments? Well, hopefully this means focusing on Sac to MLS 100% if it wasn't his agenda before.
This is AWESOME! A SRFC supporters group in SF. The Golden Gate Bridge Battalion: https://www.facebook.com/GGBBattalion "The Golden Gate Bridge Battalion #G2B2 is an INDEPENDENT supporter group for Sacramento Republic FC and subgroup of the Tower Bridge Battalion" http://twitter.com/GGB_Battalion Yes, it's a "subgroup," but still. Does anyone know if the 'Quakes, just down the peninsula, have a SF supporters group? Just curious. BTW, IMO, the Ultras have nothing on TBB. I've been a season ticket holder since the return of the 'Quakes, and I think TBB is louder and every bit as enthusiastic as the Ultras.
Wow, that's some dedication. I don't think there are any "subgroups" or "chapters" in SF for the EQ SGs, just lots of members there. But I'm not sure. I wonder if those people are Sacramento transplants or just want to support a USL team?
I doubt it. I've been saying for a while that the SRFC brand and culture could have a greater draw across Northern California than some realize. It has a very good chance of making inroads into the Bay Area, partly because the Quakes have (for many reasons) failed to make the whole Bay Area their own. The I-80 corridor is there for SRFC's taking.
A criticism I've had of the Quakes FO for years. They act like a small market team rather than the entire bay area's team. Now it's coming home to roost. Now that Sac is making a run at MLS they need to do more to capture the north bay.
I resemble that remark! I wasn't going to say it earlier, but what the hell ... You all know my views on San Jose's position in the Bay Area (and Northern California) pecking order. It's no surprise to me that the Quakes have little draw outside the South Bay. San Jose has no interest or importance to a large swath of the Bay Area. Really, if they couldn't attract me, a North Bay native, and a soccer fan, and an MLS supporter since the league's inception -- well, I'm not atypical. Ultimately, the Quakes truly are a San Jose team. And, frankly, they act accordingly: hence their small team ways. If MLS wanted a big team in the Bay Area, they shouldn't have put the Quakes in San Jose. It's a harsh thing to say about San Jose, but it's true. You'd think that the rise of Silicon Valley would have made San Jose a more relevant cultural beacon for the area. But oddly, the opposite has happened. At least when I was growing up San Jose and the Peninsula were known for something cultural: they were far more Republican than the rest of the Bay Area. Now they're just technologically laden mush. Meanwhile, SRFC, which has so much going against it -- and truly is the smaller city -- acts like a regionally important team. They hook into the look and feel of Northern California's history and culture. And they aspire bigger. That's why they're attractive to so many.
Anyone have a ticket to sale for the Cosmos game? I had an opportunity to buy one on StubHub yesterday but waited to long.
I understand your position and you make good valid points but as far as soccer is concerned in the Bay Area anyway, since 1974, San Jose has always been the place to be. Not sure if you are old enough to remember the days of the old NASL but San Jose and their fans were electric and very well known throughout the American soccer land. They were held from 1974 -1977 or rather the days of Pele, as a flagship team for the whole league to model. Even in their losing years, they were still attendance leaders. Milan Mandaric then sold the club to Tony Kovac and tried to bring a team into Oakland where the Stompers failed miserably, lasted one year and sold them to Peter Pocklington who moved that team to Edmonton , Alberta in Canada. Then Mandaric bought back the Quakes in 1980 and held the team until 1982 starting George Best and when he sold the club to Carl Berg who kept the club until 1984 when the NASL folded. Dan Van Voorhis continued the tradition when he branched out and tried to play games in the East and North East bay with the San Francisco Bay Blackhawks, but even he, eventually made his way to San Jose as there was virtually little or hardly much interest from any other high school venues where the team held their games. I remember Newark Memorial HS was their home and they drew ok , say maybe 5000 on a good night but it was short lived and it was not a professional stadium so he moved back to Spartan Stadium in SJ for his APSL team. No one else had any interest in bringing a franchise to anywhere else in the entire Bay Area and Van Voorhis won the bid to have the inaugural MLS team play in San Jose in 1996. Those years, 1974-1984 did quite a lot for the grass roots level of soccer in this entire region. There were people hanging in the trees at Spartan Stadium and all kinds of ethnic soccer fans and the cultural diversity was tremendous. If you were in the stands back then, you could hear Yugoslavs, Italians, Portuguese , English and Germans and even some Latin fans but the atmosphere in those days reminded me of something out of Europe that I've yet seen in America. I was there and I have not ever seen anything like it and I remember one game where the ref asked for a police escort because of his bad decisions and the fans were going crazy. I didn't see it at the 1994 WC held in this country, not at the MLS startup or the return of the Quakes in 2008. If it was not for that team and those initial pioneers and/or fans, I seriously doubt we would be here talking about soccer now and doubt we would be boasting a new stadium in San Jose or even talking about a team or a stadium in Sacramento or anywhere in Northern California.
He comes from a corner of the bay with no anchor or identity of its own, falvo. His kin are the two-faced people who bask in the "progressive" glow of Frisco, but having moved across the bridge to escape poor minorities. Of course he doesn't understand San Jose (or Oakland) sports fandom. Really, Sac is in the exact same boat. No stylish crest or Portland mimicry is going to change that.
You think I'm prejudiced against San Jose, but my prejudice pales in comparison to yours. Your prejudice is just purely ugly. You're seething with hatred for San Francisco and the North Bay. So you scream stupid insults and charge racism. Ugly. Ugly. Ugly. It's just pure stupid hatred on your part. Oh, and calling it "Frisco" -- that's just testament to the fact that you want nothing more than to piss us off. You're just trolling there.
No, guy, your cluelessness with regard to "Frisco" has just been demonstrated, and it ties quite heavily to the Bay Area's brand of blind racism. The term has been used for a while and is still common parlance across a broad swath of the region. The fact that you and other anti-Frisco types suggest otherwise is your own testament to persistent avoidance of certain demographics, although I do doubt its willful on your part. I would say such a stance is more classist than racist, regardless of how intertwined the concepts are. Furthermore, I was raised on Giants and Niners, like you, and like many people in Sac. Antipathy toward the modern bastard incarnation of SF is not learned at birth, it is gained through continual interaction (with thousands of poseur dickheads). My bias, as you perceive it, is just the proverbial shoulder I throw back against yours. You're the guy clutching on to a prejudice from 1996.
You don't know me and you don't know what you're talking about, but you casually lump me in as an unwitting racist. This is over the line of what should be allowed here. Your screeds are way over the line. You have lost all perspective and decorum amid your self-righteous anger and hatred.
If you think people who say "Frisco" are trolls who conflict with your ideals of real Northern California, what is the proper term for you? Are you going to bulldoze rap CDs in the steet to rid your land of that evil word? Besides, I went out of my way to say that your views demonstrate classism more than conscious racism.
You just keep digging your ugly, obnoxious hole. To you San Francisco and the North Bay are bastions of racism and now also classism, so any expression of the typical attitudes of those areas is, by your definition, inherently racist or classist or both. It's impossible to have a reasonable conversation with you. You have an overbearing, maximalist, prejudiced view that leaves no room for reasonableness. You don't want to be reasonable here. You've decided to hate people from San Francisco and the North Bay, and you've conscripted every ugly accusation you can concoct to vindicate your hatred. You have pegged me and my ilk as "two-faced," racist, classist, and who know what else. You disgust me.
In one sentence you've managed to do violence to my position and conveniently forget the litany of slurs you've lobbed in my direction. That's a whole lot of crap you've packed into fewer than 20 words.
How did we get from talking about the Quakes not taking advantage of the whole Bay Area to north bay racism? For what it's worth not having grown up in the Bay Area, I've always heard "Frisco" from the older generation sports fans with disdain. It's always been SF to me. Frisco is an actual place in TX, not CA. I had no idea that means I'm a racist too?
Because it's somebody's usual anti-415 schtick. That's how. And, yeah, calling it Frisco is the mark of the tourist. Cali too.
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