Game #47-San Francisco 49ers

San Francisco 49ers vs Pittsburg Steelers
December 19th, 2011
Candlestick Park

Off to my first Monday night football game. I am in SF with Keli to catch a couple games and take a mini vacation. We have been hanging out with my college buddy over the past day but Monday we had time to explore the city. We checked out the Peirs, walked by Coit tower, viewed Alcatraz from afar, got some great pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge, and headed over to Garadehli Square. The one consistant at each place...a million Steelers fans. They have completed flooded the city and are out in force prior to the game. So needless to say, the public transportation to the game was out of hand. I met up with Greg to hit up the local 79X bus but noticed everyone was completely packed. In fact, about 4 hours prior to the game I noticed a ton of people waiting for a bus but had no clue the lines would still be there 30 minutes prior to game time. When we finally got onto the MUNI it took 1.5 hours to go 5 miles. We litterally could have walked to the game faster, that is if we didn't have to go through the ghetto to get to the park. The only saving grace for us is the fact that Candlestick is a piece of crap and the transformer blew causing a 20 minute blackout. So instead of missing the entire first quarter the bus was pulling up just as the fireworks were going off.

The game was actually pretty exciting, not a lot of points to start off but tons of good plays on both ends. Alex Smith, the QB for the 49ers is definately getting better and having Frank Gore as running back gives them some options. On the other end the Steelers have a broken Ben Rothlesburger (injured ankle) but you can never count them out with defeners such as Troy Polimolu. As the game heading into the second quarter with the 49ers up 6-0, the stadium went black again. Another power loss for about 20 minutes halted the game but did not damper the crowds enthusiasm. For the first time in years SF has a winning team and the fans were out in full force. With 10 minutes left in the 4th Quarter Frank Gore took the ball in for a TD to give the home team a 20-3 lead and that was our queue to jet out of there to get a bus back to the city (the game already took over 4 hours becuase of the blackouts and TV time outs, plus I had a 4am wake up call to get to my plane flight).

My only take away, and this is pretty surprising, the SF locals are Ga Hett Toe! Maybe it was just the area where we were but all the fans seemed like they wanted to fight every Steelers fan. I lot of yelling, cussing, middle fingers...who would have thought the Raiders game would be more civilized?