Published since 2005. San Francisco is a city that belongs to the people of the world. Hence this blog has a global focus. The name "Sam Spade's San Francisco" refers to an exciting era in the City's history, the time of Dashiell Hammett's fictional gumshoe and San Francisco character, Sam Spade. My name is Tom Dunn and I edit the blog. I'm not as exciting as Sam Spade, but I am definitely a San Francisco character.Contact or on Twitter -- Search blog below.
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Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Don't Crucify Golf on a Welfare Cross
The Board of Supervisors voted to 6-5to indefinitely delay a decision on whether to allow recreation and park officials to invite bids from contractors toturn over three of the city's golf courses to private management. While I'm very glad the Board voted as they did, it is obvious there is no consensus of opinion about the future of golf in San Francisco.
Some San Franciscans strongly disapprove of the City operating golf courses. They say the money can more wisely be spent funding other programs, such as programs for the homeless. They point to city-operated golf courses as evidence that gentrification is gaining control of the City; that the City is in danger of becoming a gated society for the "haves" and a dumping ground for the "have-nots".
I disagree.
The role of our City should be to continuously move toward excellence and refinement and culture and sophistication. To do so is to make a commitment to excellence. We should strive to become a better educated and more refined population than we are today. We must always be committed to move in this direction.
The first game of golf for which records survive was played at Bruntsfield Links, in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1456, recorded in the archives of the Edinburgh Burgess Golfing Society, now The Royal Burgess Golfing Society. It has always been a game for gentle people, peaceful people, educated people, refined people.
Contrary to the ill-informed ideas of some, golf is not a game for snobs. It is not a game for the rich. It is not a game for white people.Those are the accusations usually made against golf. None of them wash. They are all intellectually and factually empty arguments.
Additionally, the argument is sometimes made that the City would do better to stop spending money on maintaining golf courses when it can spend the money on the homeless.That is a dangerous and pathetic argument. It is dangerous in that it promotes a direction for the City's future that would eventually turn the entire City into one great big Glide Church. We would be world champions at being surrogate parents to dysfunctional crack addicts, petty criminals and those whose lot in life can be best described as "just plain lazy bums". We would become a giant Welfare Department.
If that ever came to pass, what do you think would happen to our tourist business? And if our income began to dry up, how in hell would we continue feeding all the homeless that would be attracted to the City. We would stop being a magnet to paying tourists and increasingly become a magnet to misfits and panhandlers.
Turning the golf courses into soccer fields, barbecue pits and sand boxes (as Sophie Maxwell wants to do) would be a step backwards, a step toward mediocrity and a step toward becoming a big, plain, ugly, poverty-infested and penniless town like so many we see the the Valley.
San Francisco must continue its long-standing vision to be a shining City upon a hill, a true example of one of America's great alabaster cities. We must work very hard to attract the brightest and best the world has to offer. We want people coming to San Francisco who have remarkable educations, who have vision, who have intelligence, who have refinement and gentility and who will help lead this City, this state and this nation into a brighter, better and more peaceful future.
We are at a crossroad.We can become that shining City on a hill ...
or
We can become America's largest welfare dumping ground and suffer a future full of wandering panhandlers and distant memories of the way it used to be. Sad. Very sad.
Keeping the golf courses and continuing to manage the golf courses is a move in the right direction and the best direction.
Preserve our urban style and defend our City's refinement.Don't drive away the producers and the providers in favor of the loafers, the sponges and those unfortunates who need someone to care for them throughout their lives. Don't turn San Francisco into California's State Mental Hospital.
Listen, Sam: With ideas and concepts like you have just expressed, you are in serious danger of becoming an endangered species. San Francisco has always depended on people like you, but times are changing and a whole new flock of people have come into San Francisco. Unfortunately many of the new arrivals really don't care for this city as much as some of the old timers like you (can I call you that?). Sometimes I'm a little afraid what will happen if there is nobody left to keep us on course. Good luck, Sam and keep on writing - we're reading!
To the reader who compared me to Gavin Newsom and Aaron Peskin: I know your comment was not intended to be a compliment, but I am of the opinion that it is extremely complimentary to be compared to both the Mayor and to the President of the Board of Supervisors, most particularly when those two offices are held by capable and dedicated gentlemen the caliber of Gavin Newsom and Aaron Peskin. Thank you.
4 comments:
lovely piece of writeup
Listen, Sam: With ideas and concepts like you have just expressed, you are in serious danger of becoming an endangered species. San Francisco has always depended on people like you, but times are changing and a whole new flock of people have come into San Francisco. Unfortunately many of the new arrivals really don't care for this city as much as some of the old timers like you (can I call you that?). Sometimes I'm a little afraid what will happen if there is nobody left to keep us on course. Good luck, Sam and keep on writing - we're reading!
You are just as much a gentrified elitist as Gavin Newsom and Aaron Peskin. You wouldn't know a progressive idea if it slapped you in the face.
To the reader who compared me to Gavin Newsom and Aaron Peskin: I know your comment was not intended to be a compliment, but I am of the opinion that it is extremely complimentary to be compared to both the Mayor and to the President of the Board of Supervisors, most particularly when those two offices are held by capable and dedicated gentlemen the caliber of Gavin Newsom and Aaron Peskin. Thank you.
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