49er Fever Turns City by the Bay Into City of the Bizarre

Radio disc jockey No. 1: “I don’t feel very glib this morning. I pulled out of my driveway on the way to work and ran over my neighbor’s dog. I think I killed him.”

Radio disc jockey No. 2: “Heeey, that’s Super Bowl fever.”

If you left your heart in San Francisco, you’d better come get it. By the end of this weekend, somebody might smash that sucker flat.

“You should have heard the celebration the night the 49ers won the Super Bowl in 1982,” said the cab driver as he headed out of the city, his favorite direction this week. “There hasn’t been anything like it here since World War II ended.

“The noise must have gone on for three or four hours. A friend of mine was driving his cab through downtown with his window down, and some guy reached in and stole the watch right off his wrist.

“The police finally got tired of it and started hitting everybody that moved, whether they were doing anything wrong or not. The papers called it a police riot.

“This time, with the Super Bowl down at Stanford, the craziness has already started. I dread to think what might happen if the 49ers win this time. I’m taking Sunday off and staying home.”

“I thought San Francisco was a sophisticated city,” a passenger said.

“Yeah, it usually is,” the cab driver said. “But sometimes, I don’t know what it is, the people just lose control.”

San Franciscans have come out of the closet. Not that closet. They came out of that closet a long time ago.

This is the closet where they kept their indifference.

If you’re from L.A., it’s a sight for sore Izods.

If a Southern Californian dares to admit his roots to anyone here, the first thing the native will tell him is on which side of the plate the salad fork goes. The second thing is to go home.

We’re not wanted here. We wear bluejeans with sport coats, drink red wine with fish, watch too much television and listen too little to National Public Radio.

We’re poor relatives who share the state but not the state of mind.

They’re above us everywhere, not just on the map.

Then, someone had the bright idea to bring the Super Bowl to Stanford.

And the 49ers got in it.

Suddenly, a city that considers itself just below Paris on the sophistication chart turns into Baton Rouge on the night before the Ole Miss game.

If you believe San Franciscans, theirs is a city of little cable cars climbing halfway to the stars.

This week, it’s a city of people whose elevators don’t climb halfway to the top.

In the Embarcadero Plaza Thursday, radio station KYUU (“KY Yum-Yum”) was giving away six pairs of Super Bowl tickets in a contest to see which 49er fans could act the most outrageously.

As about 600 people cheered and the Goodyear blimp hovered over the scene, the first contestant, electronics technician Bob Tuttle from San Jose, was tarred with molasses and feathered. That earned him sixth place.

Fourth place went to Cynthia Cheak, who works in a shoe store. She impersonated San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein doing a burlesque act, stripping down to her 49er T-shirt, while an accompanist sang, “Dianne, Dianne, she’s sweet and kind of naughty, too.” Tony Snerdel, a fireman who was wearing a Miami Dolphin sweatshirt, brought 4,900 raw eggs for the spectators to throw at him. He got second place.

There was a tense moment when one of the contestants, who was impersonating a sundae, had difficulty getting the cherry to stay in his navel and accidentally squirted whipped cream on a man in a pink tutu.

The winner was Art Rasey of Hayward.

“What do you do for a living,” KYUU disc jockey Don Bleu asked him.

“Have a good time,” Rasey said.

Rasey’s idea of a good time Thursday was to have his sister give him a Mohawk haircut and paint 49er insignias on both sides of his head.

It was more dangerous than it sounds because Rasey wouldn’t sit still while he was being sheared. He kept jumping up and down, flapping his arms, and yelling about the Super Bowl. He scored a lot of points for enthusiasm.

“Art is one of the guys who wouldn’t submit to a drug test,” Bleu said.

When his outrageous act was completed, Rasey leaped off the stage and ran into the crowd.

“Art’s loose! Art’s loose!” the disc jockey said.

“SUPER BOWL TICKETS WANTED. Young woman still needs 4 tickets.”

As the story goes at Super Bowl headquarters this week, “young woman” received a call the morning her ad appeared in one of the San Francisco newspapers from a man who said he had two tickets available.

She asked how much he wanted for them.

No money, he said.

What, she asked.

“Talk dirty to me,” he said.

Every Super Bowl since II has been a sellout. Tickets are never easy to come by. But the fact that one of the teams is located within a half hour’s drive of the game site has made this Super Bowl, XIX, the hottest ticket ever.

“I think we easily could have sold 300,000,” said Don Weiss, the National Football League’s executive director.

Stanford Stadium holds 83,748.

As a result, tickets, which have a face value of $60, have been selling for as much as $1,000.

People seem willing to barter almost anything.

“SUPER BOWL tix wanted, will trade 12 new Cabbage Patch kids for 2 tix.”

“TRADE 30’ Trimaran Sailboat, 18 H/P Outboard, 4 sails + extras, for SUPERBOWL Tks.”

“WILL TRADE ’68 Pontiac Bonneville Conv., all power, for 2 Super Bowl tickets.”

“SUPER BOWL TIX WANTED (3) Will trade Santa Cruz Beach house + $500 CASH.”

“ROUND TRIP Air France, Paris or Nice, 1st Class.”

Of course, you may be wondering why the demand wasn’t as high when the Super Bowl was in Pasadena in 1980, even though the Rams were playing in it.

That’s because Los Angeles, unlike any other host city, swallows the Super Bowl. L.A. doesn’t get excited about anything smaller than the Olympics. Even then, people leave to beat the traffic after the first 75 meters of the 100 meters dash.

YOU KNOW YOU’RE IN SAN FRANCISCO WHEN:

One of the newspapers ran a poster-size picture of quarterback Joe Montana and wide receiver Dwight Clark in bikini swim trunks.

The demand was so high for reprints that the newspaper began selling copies of the poster.

Nine of every 10 requests were from males.

According to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle this week, one of the 49ers’ biggest fans is Elbert Hausam of Rockville. But he won’t be needing a ticket because he’s been dead since 1978.

A few weeks ago, his son, Barry, got some red paint and wrote “49er FAITHFULL--24 YRS” on a piece of lumber. He took it to the Rockville cemetery and planted it in the ground next to his father’s grave. Barry said his father probably wouldn’t mind that he had misspelled the word faithful.

Now, the cemetery’s gravedigger, Steve Samo, has decided that since he has to work Sunday, he’s going to put a portable television set tuned to the Super Bowl near Hausam’s grave with a can of beer on the headstone.

“It’ll be nice to have another fan to watch the game with,” Samo told the Chronicle.

A man walked into traffic court in Stockton this week wearing a Dolphin cap.

“Remove that hat or I’ll hold you in contempt!” said the judge, Anthony Luccachini.

At Scoma’s Restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf, a quiet restaurant until it was overrun by football fans this week, the waitress approached the table to take an order.

“You missed all the excitement,” she said. “The coach of the Dolphins was here earlier.”

“Oh yeah?” the people at the table said.

“Yes,” she said. “Mike Ditka.”

“Mike Ditka?”

“Yes,” she said. “He was here with a man named Shula.”

The Super Bowl trophy is in the window of San Francisco’s Tiffany & Co., which designed it. A doll dressed in a 49er uniform--No. 16 for quarterback Joe Montana--stands upright in front of it, about to throw a pass. Stretched out at Montana’s feet, with his face in the dirt, is another doll, dressed as a Dolphin.

Other elegant stores, such as Gump’s, Neiman-Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, also have Super Bowl displays.

YOU KNOW YOU’RE AT THE SUPER BOWL WHEN:

There was a placekicking contest among high school football players, dressed in full uniform, one morning in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency of San Francisco.

Looking down on the scene from outside his eighth-floor room, a sportswriter from Philadelphia--where else?--booed the kickers when they missed.

One final complaint:

After checking into the Hyatt early this week, a sportswriter from an Eastern city called room service to order a six-pack of Diet Cokes.

Upon delivery a few minutes later, the sportswriter was presented with a bill for $20.07.

The hotel could have won first place in KYUU’s outrageous act contest.