Thank You Warriors

Blog #2

You don't have to be a basketball fan, or even a sports fan to appreciate how the Golden State Warrior's NBA victory breathed much-needed life into the city. All through the play-offs, and then the series against the Boston Celtics, fans flooded into the city, despite the fact they didn't have tickets. They just wanted to be part of the moment, and gathered collectively outside of the Chase Arena for the shared experience. San Francisco, be they the 49ers, Giants, or Warriors, has a legacy of producing championship teams. I remember when the Giants were winning World Series victories every other year for six years. I've witnessed Giant's and 49er's victory parades many times, so why does this one feel different? Why did the Warriors see almost a million well-wishers, when their football and baseball counterparts were lucky to get half that size crowd when they had their victory parades?

My first answer is my first answer for everything: Covid. The Covid pandemic left its essence on everything. Whatever anxiety or day-to-day problems we face, they now have an impermeable layer of Covid on them. It's like how no matter where you eat in New Orleans, you always seem to get a side order of red beans and rice, whether you wanted it or not. You see this coating whenever you see a bottle of hand sanitizer when none existed there before. You feel it when you are in a public place and someone coughs next to you. They maybe masked and even shielded, but your first instinct is to get as far from that person as possible. You see it in the weaponization of our politics. I don't just mean unhinged MAGA politicians, I mean when has a mayor went to the performative extreme and say "bullshit," on purpose, at an official press conference?

In his book, Season of the Witch, author David Talbot writes about another time when the city experienced anxiety over a pandemic, political upheaval, and a sports franchise that won a championship victory when the city really needed it. The 1982 Super Bowl defeat of the Dallas Cowboys was just such an event. "Wounded by one civic trauma after the next -and long used to the dreariness of defeat on its athletic fields- San Francisco was not quite ready to give itself over to the 49ers fever. But the numbness from all those years of grisly headlines slowly began to lift from the city. The glow was spreading, like the first fingers of light over Twin Peaks, after an endless shroud of gloom.”

Like a tightly wound coil from the pressures of the last three years, the Warrior's victory put a spring in the city's step. In the end, Mr. Talbot's observation of that magical time in 1982 rings true today, "Cities, like people, have souls. And they can be broken by terrible events, but they can also be healed. It was just a game. It was just a catch. But sometimes that's enough.

Warriors Victory Parade 2022