The Designer Burger (or How to Turn Ground Beef into a Cash Cow)

“A hamburger by any other name costs twice as much. “   Evan Esar (American humorist)

The hamburger, that simple, basic, culinary symbol of American egalitarianism has in recent years gone through a makeover.  What started as a simple ground beef patty resting greasily in a bun has gone designer.  It’s like the kid who goes to Hollywood gets famous, lets success go to his head and then forgets where he came from.  Like that kid who’s traded his Wranglers for a Gucci suit and scorns his old friends, big time chefs are trying to turn the hamburger into an uppity snob.

When I was a kid a hamburger was something that was featured at diners and drive-ins.  People who claimed even a fragment of taste never went to a fine restaurant with the intent of ordering a burger.   If it was even on the menu it was on the kids menu or buried at the bottom of the dinner menu to satisfy the occasional riff-raff who darkened the establishment’s doorstep.  Sometimes it was disguised as something called a diet plate which usually consisted of a burger patty sans bun with some cottage cheese and a couple of canned peach wedges on the side. 

Some years back a restaurant in San Francisco paid homage to the ground beef patty. Hippopotamus Hamburgers on Van Ness Avenue featured an array of burgers on a menu that was creative if sometimes a little misguided (the Sundae Burger with ice cream, hot fudge and a pickle comes to mind).  My parents took me there on a few occasions.  As I recall I usually ordered the Island Burger or the Chili Burger which as the menu described came “covered with chili and beans (it’s a gas).”  The menu even presented a little social commentary.  For example, for 110.69 you could get the Liberationburger described as a “Whole male chauvinist pig – sliced thin – and laid on a water bed by a California girl – presented with bunches of wild organics.”  What I would like to know these many years later; was there some sort of prurient double entedre in that 69 cents or is my dirty little mind working overtime?  I suppose we’ll never know since The Hippo closed in 1987.  But the Hippo Burgers with all the extras from beans to chocolate sauce were still at their core, basic burgers. (For an interesting look at The Hippopotamus Menu follow the link).

Which brings us to today’s top shelf designer burgers.  A few weeks back we found ourselves at a place called Burger Bar.  Located inside downtown San Francisco’s Macy’s, Burger Bar is a big deal apparently for the fact that it’s run by renowned chef Hubert Keller, of Fleur de Lys, one of the haughtier “dining experiences” in San Francisco.  Burger Bar calls itself “the ultimate burger experience.”

Here’s where I have to digress.  When exactly did going out to dinner become a “dining experience?”   Yeah I know, restaurants are trying to couch a meal at their place as being something extraordinary and unforgettable.  If that’s the case we have those at home on a regular basis when my two year old grandson Jackson chows down.  Jackson’s act usually includes smushing food into his face and tossing food overboard from the highchair when he doesn’t like it or is done eating.  Finished with milk?  The sippy cup gets a toss over the shoulder.  The dogs love it.  Like canine groupies they gather around Jackson knowing that sooner or later food magically falls from the sky.  But a restaurant dining experience?  Meh.

But back to burgers.  The starting price for a burger at Burger Bar is $9.75; which gets you the burger, the bun, lettuce, tomatoes, onion and a (one) pickle.  The scam, err, I mean allure is that you get to “build your own burger.”  And like any construction project, building your burger here is fraught with cost overruns.  The menu is divided into sections to allow you to select the various components for your “burger construction experience.”  There is the “dairy” which lists the cheeses, the “garden” with various veggies, the “grill” for grilled add-on, the “pantry” for condiments and the “Hubert Keller retirement fund vault” where you leave your hard earned money (okay this last is a cynical lie). 

Cheese runs about 75 cents unless you opt for blue cheese which is 95 cents as is pepper jack.  Huh?  That’s 20 cents extra for a few slivers of habanero in a 75 cent slice of jack which in the final analysis is just too much jack for some jack.  Bacon runs $1.15.  Okay so except for the jack cheese these add-ons aren’t too terribly outrageous (although $9.75 for the bare bones, so to speak, still seems just wrong).  But then you come to a (one) fried egg which runs $1.95.  A random scientific survey of shoppers -- well, I asked my wife -- revealed that a dozen eggs costs about two bucks or just about 17 cents per egg.  Items from Hubert’s pantry run from .45 for Dijon mustard to two bucks for guacamole.  I bought some avocados at the local super yesterday at 5 for a couple bucks; just sayin’.  Salsa is .95 which is bottomless at any Mexican joint and doesn’t cost one centavo extra.  But where Hubert is really raking in the green is, appropriately enough, in the garden.  Sprouts are .55, baby spinach .80 and sliced cucumber .75. 

If architecture isn’t your game you can get one of the pre-fab burgers, like the American Classic which is as close to the everyman burger as you can get there.  There’s the Surf and Turf Burger; the ruination of two stand-alone classics, hamburger and lobster, accomplished by putting them together under one bun.  If you have deep pockets, for 60 dollars you can get the Rossini which comes with foie gras and shaved truffles.

But Hubert isn’t the only chef to shove a silver spoon in the hamburger’s ass.  And the burger is no longer buried in the bottom of the menu.  Why would it be when a chef can command 15 to 20 dollars or more for ground beef by throwing in some highfalutin add ons and a fancy name?  In San Francisco for instance there are:

                The Zuni Café which offers a 6 ½ ounce burger for 15 dollars.  Would you like fries with that?  That will be 6 dollars sir, and that means your burger meal costs more than a double sawbuck.  Zuni’s burger isn’t offered on the regular dinner menu.  It’s available only after 10 PM which caters to the post -performance crowd from the local opera house.  You have to ask yourself just how good can this burger be if you can eat it while dressed in your going to the opera duds?  Any self-respecting burger has to carry the veiled threat that it will deposit an unhealthy splotch of grease on that tux. 

                Serpentine has a 12.50 burger described in a review as being just a thin patty of beef on a buttered, griddled bun.  The review goes on to say “you could make a burger like this at home if you wanted but eating one at Serpentine’s bar makes you feel like a real local.”  Seriously?  If I want that local feeling in The City I’ll just go to a dive bar and get an Old Crow on the rocks for 3 bucks.

                Absinthe’s 12.50 burger includes additions of “fatty trim.”  Whadyamean additions of fatty trim?  Fatty trim is supposed to be part of a burger’s genetic code.  Does their chocolate cake come with “additions of chocolate?”  Along with “fatty trim,” the Absinthe burger comes with onion, lettuce and a (one) pickle.  For 1.50 each you can get mushrooms, cheese, caramelized onions, heirloom tomatoes and a fried egg (Absinthe is leaving some money on the table.  Keller is getting a buck ninety-five for his eggs).  The fries are hand cut and run 6 bucks.  That kind of money for a burger and fries might just compel me to get a triple shot of the restaurant’s namesake.    

You may have noticed a common thread here that those kinds of prices would me drive me to drink.  Is it because I’m a tightfisted old bastard?   Well sure that goes without saying but I have a hard time swallowing an overpriced Hamburg steak without some alcoholic pain relief.  But beyond that I can get a much better burger in nearby Pinole for the price of Absinthe’s hoity-toity hand cut fries at a little hole in the wall called The Red Onion.  

The Red Onion is just an old fashioned little burger joint that offers burger joint food at burger joint prices.  I suppose Johnny Yee doesn’t extort his customers because not only does he serve an honest burger, he’s just a greasy spoon owner who doesn’t have his name on the Food Network marquee and his location, literally in the shadow of the Pinole Valley High School stadium light standards, is a gold mine in itself.  Let’s consider his bacon cheeseburger; a 1/3 pound patty with a quarter pound of bacon, lettuce, grilled onions, tomato and their house dressing.  It costs a mere 9 cents more than those hand cut fries from Absinthe.  You get it to take out and by the time you’re home the grease is oozing through the side of the bag and if that sounds revolting then you don’t understand that the secret of a good burger is fat.  Without it all you have is a disc of sawdust.  Ah but do you want the dining experience (there’s that term again) of feeling like a local?  Then eat at the counter.  No it won’t be the same as eating the stuck-up-burger at a pretentious bar with a banker on your left and some trendy douchebag in a suit on your right, but it will be a dining experience (there’s that term yet again) that harkens back to when a burger was a damn burger.  You can’t have a martini but a nice thick chocolate malt isn’t a bad substitute.  And what better atmosphere to savor a good burger than sitting at the counter of a little joint, watching the fry cooks work their flattop magic and  listening to the sizzle of several patties and pounds of bacon while the crew, a few old timers and kids from PVHS share some banter.   

And so today I went out to The Red Onion and ordered a double cheeseburger with a side of onion rings.  Mind you this was strictly in the interest of honest reportage.  My wife asked me to pick her up a regular hamburger.  By the time I drove home I was literally slavering from that smell of beef, onions and grease.  I removed the soaked wrapping to find the burger as it’s supposed to be, two patties of medium rare beef on a plain bun oozing orange American cheese with grilled onions spilling from the edges.  It was big and messy and unpretentiously American and it was simply called a double cheeseburger.  And it was better than The Chef Ima Bigshot Bombast Burger with ridiculous extras like Sonoma blue cheese, French goose liver, olive tapenade, poached quail eggs and fried froufrou.  And did I mention that my two burgers with onion rings came to total of 12.50? 

You might ask if I've ever had a designer burger and  I’m glad you asked me that question.  Yes I have and on more than a few occasions.  They were good but they weren’t memorable.  They aren’t the kind of burger that you just gotta have when you need a burger fix.  They don’t inspire a pilgrimage.

I doubt that the trendiness of the designer hamburger is going away.  Americans are too hooked on the notion that if it has pretention and it costs more than it should it must be good.  But that’s alright.  This is America and in America choice is, well, the American way.  And I’m confident that since the good old fashioned burger has been around since the turn of the 20^th century it will be around long enough for me to keep getting it the way it was meant to be until the day my arteries are as solid as concrete. 

A Story of Strength and Grace

My wife came home from a trip yesterday.  Her trip wasn’t to a tropical paradise or the happiest place on Earth.  No, far from that it was a trip to a little corner of hell called cancer; specifically renal cell carcinoma or kidney cancer.  Like what happens on many trips she came home with a souvenir, a small incision on her left side.  And, as what also happens when we take trips she left something behind; a kidney and a string of lymph nodes (the pathologist report is still outstanding on the lymph nodes but the surgeon said that his inspection showed that they were clear.).    

This is her third such trip, the other two being breast cancer which resulted in a couple of lumpectomies and a short stint of radiation treatment.  That’s really more than most people deserve but luckily she has always made it a round trip.

Cora was diagnosed in early December when back and abdominal pains sent her to emergency.  The E.R. doctor explained that instead of the kidney stones we'd hoped for there was a tumor and she would have to see a urologist as soon as possible.  A week later a CT scan came out negative, no surrounding organs were affected.  Surgery was scheduled for mid-January.  But this story doesn’t concern itself so much with cancer as it does with Cora’s strength, grace and dignity and of changes in perception about life as we’ve grown older. 

If you had been around Cora for the past month, you wouldn’t know that she was living in the shadow of cancer.  She went through her daily routine, kept the holiday season and was as cheerful as always.  The only indication that anything was wrong was during those pensive moments when she would sit in silence, staring at nothing in particular.  She never talked about it unless the subject was broached by those who found out and then she only asked one thing; pray for me.  I think that the only time that she looked really resigned was as she was being wheeled to surgery.  It was the first time I’d ever seen her look vulnerable.

For years I’ve maintained some things about Cora.  First of all, she’s the strongest person I know.  Now physically she can’t lift shit unless some emergency pressed her to do so and then she would probably hoist a ’57 Chevy.  Her strength comes from her dignity, her steadiness and her faith.  All of this is rather foreign to me which is really no surprise since I’ve had a penchant at times for being the biggest dickweed on two wheels (according to the dictionary of urban slang a dickweed is “a completely self-absorbed, useless asshole with shit for brains”).  And the fact that she’s remained with my dickweediness for 30+ years is a further testament to the fact that the woman is a certifiable saint; a rock that would humble the great Gibraltar. 

Cora is not the ship that navigates through rough seas.  Somehow she is able to be the ship surrounded by a cocoon of calm sea in the midst of the tempest.  She’s been the shopkeeper of the household’s supply of cool and calm.  The roof is leaking; I’ll cuss and spit and she’ll go to the Yellow Pages and find a roofer.  We have an expensive household project before us and while I hem and haw over the expense, I’ll come home one day and find the project done and done.  When the local Toyota plant shutdown in 2010 and my job was in imminent danger of disappearing and  my stomach was in knots and I thought life as we knew it was done she was the one who went on as usual and told me not to worry, “we’ll be okay.”  She was right of course.  I was laid off, got severance and a better job.  She's stared cancer in the eye three times without blinking while I, in frustration over a broken ankle launched my crutches across the room on more than a few occasions.  To use a sports metaphor, she’s been Joe Montana in Super Bowl XXIII who, when the 49ers needed an end of game 92 yard drive calmed the huddle by saying to his teammates, “Isn’t that John Candy in the stands?”  I’m the QB who goes into the huddle and says, “Boys, we’re fucked.”

She’s the selfless woman who decided to spend our thirtieth wedding anniversary making a meatloaf, driving it to our daughter and then helping her with the two babies; who cooks dinner for the whole family and then holds the youngest baby while everyone else eats.  When I broke my ankle she drove me to work every day, even though it was out of her way, worked at her job, picked me up and then came home and made dinner.  All without complaint.  She’s the one who gives dollar bills to the homeless guys and admonishes, “It’s for your food.” So why is it that she’s had to deal with cancer three times?  That’s precisely the bone that I’ve been picking with God over the last month. 

When I was in my teens I engaged in that phony bravado that seems to be standard in adolescent males.  “Ah, I won't live past twenty five. I'll live hard and die young”  We were so many ersatz James Deans living in the comfort of suburbia.  It was easy for us to scoff about death because, Vietnam War aside, we deep down knew that we would easily see twenty five and beyond.  That bravado goes away of course and as we hit the mid-century mark we start to take note of our mortality. 

I don’t recall that sense of mortality when Cora had her lumpectomies.  We were in our forties, they were manageable and mortality was still over the next few rises.  This time it was different.  When the doctors prescribed the actual removal of an entire organ the stakes suddenly became a damn site higher.  Until the CT scan came in negative I went through those stages; you know anger, followed by sadness and a nagging fear of the worst. What the hell God, is this how it works?  Why don’t you deal this out to someone a little more deserving?  You know maybe you could start with some child molester or human trafficker or crooked politician.  This was actually when I was fearing the unthinkable. I reflected on something my daughter told me recently about how she enjoys seeing the “grandparent experience” of Cora and I interacting with her children.  It was something that she'd never had.  Her maternal grandparents lived some distance away.  She was a toddler when my mom passed and very young when my dad passed.  During her early years my dad was in the midst of Alzheimer’s and so her grandparent experience was less than ideal.  Is this the deal God?  You take Cora away from the grandkids who she cherishes so dearly and you cheat those kids out of a grandma?  I thought back to when my mom passed suddenly; dad, already slipping into dementia, rattled around that house by himself and the slippage became a plunge.  I started to understand why he held onto small mementos, some seemingly insignificant but having special meaning that only he knew.  Would I be rattling around in my house?  I know people who’ve lost a spouse and have found another partner.  How do they do that (and no this is not a value judgment)?  How could I even think of ever packing away pictures of my Cora?  I don’t hold much stock in the Mormon religion but if I’m not mistaken they hold a belief that people remain married in the hereafter for eternity.  I like that notion. 

To us Boomers, I suppose there’s a feeling that time is becoming more precious.  I was talking to a co-worker just yesterday.  I told him that I went to the 49er playoff game last weekend and that the tickets were more than I would normally pay.  I would have just watched it at home but I ponied up because my son asked me to go and my daughter and her husband would be there as well.  He agreed, saying that he recently spent more on a basketball ticket than he normally would because his daughter asked him to go with her.  Said Don, “You never know when it can end.  It can be over in an instant.”

But let’s not get the idea that I’m cowering in death’s shadow.  All is good in the domestic circle now.  Cora’s back home.  I woke up before dawn this morning and felt the comfort of seeing her in the still dim light, feeling the touch of her hand and the smell of her scent.  Even the dog is happy.  While Cora was gone Rainey would stand at Cora’s side of the bed and stare at the unoccupied space.  Today she’s been a constant sentinel at the bedside and when Cora gets up Rainey follows like a hairy shadow.

My feeling is that we’re content and comfortable as we grow older together.  We contemplate places we want to go.  We make some vague retirement plans.  Our children and their families live close by and there are frequent family gatherings.  For my part I realize I have to shed my phobia about money.  Can we do things now, take trips, eat out and go to movies and still have enough to retire on (see my earlier post, There But for the Grace of God)?  Cora assures me we’ll be fine and why should I doubt her?  It’s not like she’s been wrong on these things before.  But above all there is a certain indescribable peace.  One day I was talking with the vicar of my church and she (yes, she) was talking about keeping the Sabbath.  She offered that it isn’t all about going to church.  Anybody can go to church, she said.  Her point was that the whole idea is to have a sense of spirituality on Sunday.  I told her of quiet Sundays at the house.  It might be a rainy afternoon, the dog is curled in front of the fire in the fireplace, I’m reading and Cora is puttering or sewing, the only sounds are of the house and the smell is of dinner cooking.  There is an overriding sense of peace, balance and companionship.  This, I told Vicar Susan, is the spirituality in my life. 

If there is a God in Heaven then the blessing that She's (yes, She) bestowed on me is Cora. 

Ameri-Football-Cana

Americana:  materials concerning or characteristic of America, its civilization, or its culture; broadly: things typical of America.              Merriam-Webster

Baseball is what we were.  Football is what we have become.    Mary McGrory

I’m on my way to the NFC Divisional Playoff Game between the San Francisco 49ers and the New Orleans Saints.  The game starts at 1:30 but we’re on the road and planning to be at the stadium parking lot by 8:30.  I’m riding in with my daughter Jess and son in law Kyle in their new pickup truck. We’ll be meeting up with my son Matt on the way and caravan in.

I attended my first football game sometime in the sixties (I suppose I was only 9 or 10) at Kezar Stadium, a little bowl by today’s standards tucked away in the eastern corner of Golden Gate Park.  My dad got the tickets and it was obviously for a father-son day because his interest in sports wasn’t even passing.  I hardly knew anything about football at that age but I could easily reel off the starting lineup and pitching rotation of the Los Angeles Dodgers.  By the time we parked the car somewhere seemingly miles from the stadium the game was about to start.  We arrived somewhere around halftime and watched the second half on Kezar's hard, cramped bench seats.  Years later the 49ers would move to larger Candlestick Park and Kezar would be all but forgotten until it got a bit part in Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, where Eastwood’s Harry Callahan would confront the Scorpio murderer.  Years after attending that game with my dad I would return to Kezar to watch a Day on the Green concert starring the unlikely paring of Waylon Jennings and The Grateful Dead in a haze of cheap white wine and weed. Over the years I occasionally went to games at Candlestick until 1982, when I got season tickets.

By the time we get to the outskirts of the stadium, the main lots are closed off to all but those with prepaid parking passes.  We’re relegated to the hard packed dirt lots further out.  Once parked we unpack the truck for our tailgate barbeque.  The local air quality control board has declared today a spare the air day; no burning of wood.  The air in the square miles surrounding Candlestick is not only not being spared, it’s being abused.  It’s thick with the smoke of barbecues, cooking flesh of various species and weed.  A group of old boys to our right unpack and set up their temporary campsite.  “Let’s get drunk” says one.  It's always good to have a plan and they're well prepared to follow through with that plan.  Plenty of beer, a bottle of Skyy vodka and a personal favorite, Maker's Mark bourbon.  They have chicken, hot dogs, beans and looking out of place and forgotten, two green bananas.  What in the hell are the bananas  doing there?  There are four girls on our other side who are going basic; beer, chips and dip.

Football isn’t just a sport in America.  It’s an event; one that incorporates multiple American traditions.  Besides the game itself there is the prerequisite pregame tailgate which includes America’s love affair with the car -- the larger the better if not a truck or a recreational vehicle -- with barbeque and of course alcohol.

Jess and Kyle are ramrodding this tailgate.  They've marinated some meat for carne asada and my son has some spicy shrimp skewers.  We have shrimp and cocktail sauce, various chips and dip and beverages. This is the first tailgate they’ve organized and there have been some rookie mistakes.  There was a plan to make margaritas until it was discovered that they forgot the tequila.  Kyle and Jess go for a walk and come back 45 minutes or so later with a bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold.  They ventured out into the sketchy local neighborhood and found a bottle shop that gouged them for bad tequila. The small blender works well and drinks are served.  Thanks to my doctor’s directive I’m alcohol free and drinking Pelegrino mineral water “spiked” with margarita mix.  It isn’t bad actually but it just isn’t the same.  Can't the football gods grant me a one day imbibing pass?

I didn’t start tailgating until I had my season tickets and they ranged from the simple to the outdoor feast.  There was the seasonal snack one Sunday during Christmas season when we roasted some chestnuts over the barbeque.  We took some ribbing for that one.  Speaking of which, ribs was on the menu more than a few times.  The tailgating menu is often rich with regional fare.  In Green Bay bratwurst is a favorite while Buffalo Bills fans opt for chicken wings.  What would a tailgate party in New Orleans be with without gumbo?  Here in San Francisco, local Dungeness crab often accompanied a grilled fillet with a side of baked potato and all washed down with Napa Valley wine.  My friend Rick had a side job as a deckhand on a salmon boat and he often supplied fresh salmon steaks.  Caesar salad, sausages, chili and roasted potatoes all have graced our tailgate table. 

Tailgating isn’t just eating and drinking.  Its board games, music, TV and for some a chance to make some money by selling something.  There are of course games of catch.  In the cramped community of tailgating there’s always the chance that an errant throw will land on a car or in the middle of someone’s plate of food.  During the heady dynastic days of the 49ers there was often a band and dancing in some corner of the parking lot.  We would bring a small television so that we could watch the broadcast of the morning game.  This was before you could get TV on your smart phone – because this was before smart phones.

Some entrepreneurs make their rounds through the parking lots selling team logoed t-shirts and souvenirs, all of it cheap, of bad quality and counterfeit.  There are plenty of takers though, including undercover cops who slap on the cuffs as the transaction is completed.  One enterprising couple is selling vodka laced Jell-O shooters to raise money for Team in Training.  Is it just me or is there something contradictory about selling shooters to benefit a cancer charity?  Matt and I play catch for awhile and he warns me away from a parked BMW; just in the event he makes an errant throw or I muff a catch. 

Meal’s done and it’s time to clean up and head into the stadium walking past ongoing parties and the corpses of former parties.  The ground is littered with bottles, cans, uneaten food and mounds of hot charcoal. 

It is amazing that someone would be either so drunk or so stupid that he would stash the hot coals from his barbeque under his car (usually the gas tank).  Is he afraid that someone with larcenous charcoal intent might come by, furtively look both ways, grab them and sneak them under his coat?  This is where the excitement would build, walking towards the stadium and hearing the cheers and boos coming from inside as those fans already in their seats react to players from both teams warming up.  Its during this walk that fans get in the last drink; knock it down before the security check or do the unthinkable and toss it.  In my early days of going to games security checks were non-existent.  In fact in the very early AFC days people actually brought small barbeques INTO the stadium.  Flasks and bottles the most common contraband made their way in even with the advent of the first security checks.  Any backpacks got a cursory pat down and sometimes a quick peak inside.  Were we more tolerant in those bygone days or was there simply less bad behavior?

We get to security and have to empty our pockets and hold our arms up so that the security guy can pass the metal detector over our bodies.  He notices my binocular case and peeks inside.  Into the concourse and through the crowded aisles we make it to our seats. The stadium is nearly full and the crowd in what I think we’ll be full throat (I’ll be proven wrong later on).  I don't know anybody here.  Don't know if my neighbors are season ticket holders or, like us, bought tickets for this one game. 

"The audience as participants is indispensable to most games.  The greatest contest in the world in which only the players are present would have no game character whatever."  Marshal McLuhan, War and Peace in the Global Village.

Getting to my season ticket seats was always a time to say hi to the usual fans.  The stadium was sold out to season ticket holders and so everybody knew everybody in the area unless an owner had given away seats to a single game.  The fellow behind me was a Grateful Dead fan with a booming voice that never wore out even in the game’s waning moments; we called him “leather lungs.”  When the game starts the crowd gets involved, cheering as loudly as possible to disrupt the communication and concentration of the other team’s offense, becoming what is called the 12^th man. 

Its kickoff and the crowd is alive.  Its 63000 individual red clad cells that have merged to form one huge crimson organism; a wild red beast.  And the organism is screaming and roaring and it’s louder than at any time I can recall.  The stadium is almost literally shaking.  This isn’t just the 12^th man, it’s the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th man (waking up the next morning my ears would still be ringing, reminding me of my days of standing in the front row at a rock concert). 

8:57 left in the first quarter: The Saints open the game with the ball and nearly score but their main running threat Pierre Thomas takes a vicious hit and loses the ball to the 49ers.  Thomas is concussed and will miss the remainder of the game.  The red beast in the stands is roaring.

Football is a violent game.  A reflection of a violent American tradition?

 “Let’s face it; most of the people in our society enjoy watching one guy knock down another one.”  John Niland, former tackle with the Dallas Cowboys

“You see a tremendous block from the blind side and you can hear 50,000 “ooohs” all at once.  So they must like it."  Elroy Hirsh, Hall of Fame flanker.
"Anybody who says this game is beastly, brutal and nasty, he's right.  You are out there to inflict punishment, but not to take it."  Wayne Walker, former linebacker with the Detroit Lions. 

Going into the game my idea is to sit and watch but the emotion of the beast sucks me in.  Saints quarterback Drew Brees takes the ball and rolls to his right and the crowd wants a hit. “Stick him,” I yell. “Kill him,” screams my son.  We don’t want a hit we want a de-cleating; a hit so hard he’ll fly out of his shoes. 

2:17 left in the first quarter:  Alex Smith throws a pass to the left to Vernon Davis for a 49 yard touchdown.  With :44 seconds left Smith finds Michael Crabtree for a 4 yard scoring pass. It’s the end of the first quarter and the 49ers are ahead 14-0.  All around us the organism is in a wild frenzy.  The fellow in front of us, stewed to the gills, has been high fiving everyone around him after nearly every play.  He wants to hug and I manage to keep him at high five distance.  He turns to us and screams, “We beat the Saints.  We beat the Saints.”  I turn to Matt and tell him that since we’ve won we might as well just go home now and beat the traffic.

Alcohol has fueled a few memories some foggy, some not so flattering.  One Monday we showed up in the parking lot to begin tailgating early (Noon) for a 6:00 kickoff.  The Jack Daniels flowed early and often and my conduct in the stands was less than distinguished.  After the game, well, days after the game I realized it and decided it was time to take it down a notch. My friend Rick figured out how to solve the closure of beer sales at the end of the third quarter.  During that third frame he would visit the concession and buy two beers, drinking one and storing the other under his seat.  After a few trips he would have beers lined up under his seat like foamy little soldiers.  After one such game, leaving the stadium he was reveling in victory skipping happily until he lost his balance, staggered forward and was stopped in his wobbly tracks by a parked Buick.  It was smashing; his face smashed into the car's grill.  The car was undamaged but I imagine Rick felt it the next day. 

4:16 left in the second quarter:  The Saints have scored their second touchdown and the score is 17-14 in favor of the 49ers.  The animal is quiet. The fellow in front of us is sitting quietly with his head in his hands.  Is he trying to hold in his lunch or is he fearing that the victory he proclaimed a few minutes earlier has slipped away?

In 1994 I brought my son to watch the 49ers roll to a 44-15 divisional playoff victory against the Chicago Bears.  We had decided to take the bus from downtown to the game after having a nice breakfast at Sears' Fine Foods in the City (no not that Sears).  The wait for a bus to return was interminable and Rick decided to hire a limo.  My 11 year old son had just watched the game of his life and was leaving it in a limo, standing on the seat with his head out of the sun roof.

11:42 left in the game and the 49ers are holding on to a 3 point lead:  The 49ers Kyle Williams drops a pass over the middle and the animal groans.  The air is being sucked out of the animal as it senses impending disaster.  A fan yells out in the silence, “It hit him in the fucking hands.”

Football is played in rain or shine.  One memorable Monday night I took a friend to watch the 49ers play the Dolphins in a driving rainstorm.  He was from Chicago and had spent many a cold Sunday at Chicago’s Soldier field watching games in the snow.  We left that game early as Derek, soaked to the skin, could no longer stand the cold.  He later told me that it was the coldest he had ever been at a game.

4:11 left in the game:  The Saints score a touchdown to go ahead 24-23 and you could hear a pin drop; or the sounds of a few cheering Saints fans. Less than two minutes later Alex Smith runs off the left side for 28 yards, a touchdown and the lead.  Pandemonium. Thirty seconds later the Saints score a touchdown to go ahead 32-29.  The animal in the stands is quiet, forlorn and desperate.  The couple on my left, longtime 49er fans and season ticket holders bolt for the exit with 1:48 remaining.  I keep remembering that five days ago was the 30th anniversary of “the catch.”

Thirty years ago the 49ers reached the NFC Championship game against the Cowboys and were expected to do nothing against their longtime rival.  In 1982 you didn’t get tickets on the internet; there was no internet.  If you wanted tickets, you went to the box office and fell in line, like my friend Scott did.  And you stayed overnight in line; like Scott did.  He got a pair of seats to the game and gave me one.  We sat through one of the best games in my memory.  Trailing 27-21 the 49ers got the ball on their 11 yard line with 4:54 left and began their final drive of the game. 

1:37 left in the game and the 49ers have the ball on their own 15 yard line trailing by 3 and begin their final drive of the game.  

"We're going to call a sprint option. It's going to break up and break into the corner, you got it? Dwight will clear. If you don't get what you want simply throw the ball away."  Bill Walsh to Joe Montana.  

There were 58 seconds left and the 49ers were facing third down at the Dallas six yard line.  Joe Montana took the ball and drifted to his right chased by Cowboy defenders.  He lofted a ball that looked as if it would sail out of the end zone until Dwight Clark snagged the ball between his fingertips.  Victory, a trip to the Super Bowl and pandemonium.  On the way home I was driving down the freeway with Scott hanging out of the passenger side window from the waste up screaming in a worn out gravelly voice, “We’re going to the bowl.  We’re going to the bowl. We’re going to the fucking bowl.” 

14 seconds left in the game and the 49ers are facing third down at the New Orleans 14 yard line.  Alex Smith drops straight back to pass and throws a laser down the middle to Vernon Davis who catches it in the end zone for a touchdown. Victory and pandemonium.

Until something else comes along to grab the nation's fancy, football will remain the quintessential American sport.  It's a billion dollar industry that grabs the national attention from training camp in July through the season and the Super Bowl in February and on into the draft in the spring.  People have called for a national holiday on the Monday after the Super Bowl ostensibly to come down from the high of the game, clean up the house and clear the cobwebs from an alcohol addled brain.

I have to admit that if I had a sports bucket list a football game would be on it.  Not the Super Bowl and not the college national championship.  It would be to a place where football is the life blood of the region.  It would be an autumn game in South Bend, Indiana to watch Notre Dame or in Ann Arbor to watch the Michigan Wolverines.   

In 1982 I enjoyed one of the greatest games in 49er history with my best friend, the best man at my wedding and 30 years later still a dear friend.  Thirty years after that game I enjoyed one of the greatest games in 49er history with my son, my daughter and my son in law.  At heart and in my sentiments I'm a baseball guy, but football has brought me two of my most cherished memories with friends and family. 

  

Claim Jumping

Almost thirty years ago to the day that the San Francisco 49ers became an honest to goodness powerhouse, when Dwight Clark came out of nowhere to catch a pass that looked for all the world like it would sail out of the end zone but instead carried them to the Super Bowl, the team apparently wants to resurrect a tactic that some original 49ers – those Gold Rush fellows – used over 160 years ago.  It was called claim jumping and it involved a lowdown blackguard taking over a mining site that had been claimed previously.

The 49ers announced that they will be instituting something called a stadium builder’s license (SBL) for season tickets at their new Santa Clara stadium.  No this isn’t the state license that those fellows pouring concrete and running electrical wire are required to hold in order to erect the stadium.  This is a shakedown that football teams have been employing for years that requires fans wanting to buy season tickets to pay a fee for the rights to buy tickets.  So before you even shell out a single penny for your tickets you have to buy the rights to get to buy the tickets and the rights are wrong, financially speaking.

In the case of the 49ers if you want some of the better seats in their house you’ll need to take out a second on your own house because the SBLs will run between 20,000 and 80,000 dollars – per seat.  So a couple wanting to buy a pair of tickets will have to pony up essentially the down payment on a home just so that they can buy 10 tickets per year to watch live football; and two of those games are exhibition games which as a former season ticket holder I hated having to buy. 

Some current season ticket holders were invited by the 49ers to put down a deposit on seats at the new stadium that would be comparable to the good seats that they now have at Candlestick Park.  They probably knew going in that they would be hit with a usury license fee but in their worst nightmares did they expect tens of thousands of dollars?  The local news showed some forlorn fans leaving the 49er office shrugging their shoulders and saying essentially, “It was nice while it lasted.”  And for some fans it lasted a long, long time, going back to the 60s when the 49ers were still at Kezar Stadium.  These are the fans who earned the nickname Forty Niner Faithful, the ones who stuck with the team through years of misery, then reveled in the glory years and continued to hold on during the last decade when the team plumbed the depths.  These are the fans that loyally went to a leaky, crumbling dump called Candlestick and supported their team only to have their good seats pulled out from under them because they won’t be able to afford the SBL.  Their claims were jumped and those seats will likely go to some corporation who will give them out as perks to empty suits who don’t know a gridiron from a waffle iron. 

And the team is proud of this.  A fellow named Al Guido, the Vice President of New Stadium Sales and Services, crowed, “You have the ability to transfer it down to your family, you have the ability to transfer it down to friends, colleagues; you have the ability to sell it on the open market. I think that's just a huge benefit."  I don’t know where you’ve been Al but that’s the way it’s always worked.  I got my first season tickets 30 years ago when a colleague transferred me the rights to a pair of seats he owned (I gave up my tickets years ago when my son’s college tuition took precedence over football tickets).  Guido did mention that the 80,000 dollar seats apparently come with perks like food and drink.  I should hope so.  If I paid that kind of money for a football ticket I’d be doing one hell of a lot of drinking.  At those prices it should be a full blown orgiastic bacchanal complete with wine, women (or the gender of your choice), banned, controlled substances and song.  In fact the only way I would pay a fee of any price just for the right to buy tickets would be in the midst of a purple haze (with apologies to Jimi) of heavy drinking and drug use.  There is a thing called principle after all.   

In all fairness, and this is the only fair aspect to this story, the team is only charging those amounts on the best seats in the stadium (but every seat will carry an SBL).  And they aren’t the first team to charge license fees.  When the Raiders returned to Oakland from Los Angeles in 1989 the team charged license fees and incurred the wrath of season ticket holders when the stadium didn’t sell out and fans could walk up to the ticket booth and buy an individual game seat and avoid the fee.  I despised Al Davis for doing that to loyal Raider fans.  The Cowboys, the Giants and the Jets all have brand new digs and they charge license fees.

But just because there’s precedent doesn’t make it right.  Even the worst end zone seat will likely carry an SBL of thousands of dollars.  This essentially prices out the family.  Assuming the lowest SBL is 3000 dollars it would cost a family of four, 12,000 dollars just to buy the seats; “Say Junior if you’re planning on going to college I suggest you get a paper route."  But look at the bright side.  This bit of extortion will probably keep out the riffraff making it a family friendly environment that you won't see any families at. 

Football was once the blue collar sport, playing second fiddle to baseball.  It was a rough and tumble sport that attracted hardy fans who would sit in the cold, the rain, the wind and the snow, who would keep dry with a rain suit and warm with a flask of whiskey to fortify some watery hot chocolate in a Styrofoam cup.  Football has become, as I’ve said before on this blog, a glitzy, overdone, extravaganza catering to rich guys and corporations.  And now the 49ers, like the more disreputable of their namesake of 160 years ago, are jumping the claims of their most loyal supporters.