It’s a wake for a stadium — but a party nonetheless
49ers’ last season in S.F. starts on a winning note
Three hours before game time Sunday, Fred Santillan of Sunnyvale flicked open his gold 49ers insignia lighter and flamed up a fat cigar. He had seven flags flying on the roof of his SUV, and he was ready for battle in his redand-gold camo shorts.
There in the third row of the parking lot, to match his third-row stadium seats, Santillan opened his quest to be named “Tailgater of the Game,” an official 49ers designation, and to neither stop nor slow until he is named “Tailgater of the Year,” an even loftier title.
Santillan’s group usually consists of up to 150 friends drawn to the aroma of Santa Maria tri-tip basting on a grill that has “SF 49ers” welded onto the top. He and his entourage won the first “Tailgaters of the Year” award in 2005 but haven’t won it since.
“It would mean a lot to us,” Santillan says as
his eyes scan the crowd for the anonymous team of judges. “Since we won the first one, we would love to win the last one.”
Sunday was the last of 43 season-opening games for the 49ers at Candlestick Park, the concrete flying saucer on the edge of San Francisco Bay. Looking to build on the 49ers’ NFC championship last year, plus the match up against the Green Bay Packers, there were a lot of people there Sunday hoping to finally forget those last four downs of Super Bowl XLVII. Niners fans began another championship quest, and the 2013 regular season, on a high note with a narrow 34-28 victory.
The first full-throated “Niners!” call could be heard across the blacktop more than two hours before game time, and fans were already coursing up those much-loved escalators which suck people in like a drain funnel, then spit them out on the upper deck.
Below, intensity spread across the tent city of tailgate parties on the baking blacktop. The atmosphere was more like the last game of the season than the first.
Andrew Tuckwood flew from Calgary and arrived wearing his 49ers uniform with a custom-made helmet, face mask and shield. It was a $3,000 trip that included his date, Amber Gavin, wearing a cheerleader uniform.
Green and gold, too
Then there were all those Packers fans — seemingly a few charter planeloads — wandering the lot, looking for meat to go with their cheeseheads.
It was the first time the 49ers had hosted the Packers in a regular-season game since Dec. 10, 2006. That was a forgettable loss, Brett Favre outs-linging Alex Smith at Monster Park, as the 49ers finished a forgettable season at 7-9.
A.J. Moody, just in from Oconomowoc, Wis., wore a cheesehead top hat, green sports coat, Packers tie and yellow slacks and loafers. He wandered the lot, dressed for one of the tailgate parties with a wet bar and disco ball.
The Santillan party is not that kind of scene. Fred and his wife, Lisa, are co-presidents of the Santa Clara Gold Rushers booster club. She sets the standard in several layers of 49ers shirts, an apron displaying the 10 rules for tailgating, and all 10 nails painted with the 49ers’ SF logo, which takes nine separate trips to the salon, not counting preseason and playoff games.
“We’ve been together for 20 years,” Santillan says of his group. “We’ve been to weddings together and funerals together. This is a community on the blacktop.”
Party with some history
Mark Castanon, who prefers to be called “49ers Mark,” arrived at the Santillan tailgate wearing red face paint and his wife, Joanne, carrying his makeup kit in her clear plastic stadium-issue bag. When he starts to sweat and streak, his wife is ready to apply touch-up paint.
The longest-running community on the blacktop is likely the one operated by John and Donna Franco, at Gate 4 opposite the tower. Before the 1971 season the Francos managed to deposit a steel shipping container at the back of the lot where nobody would notice. It and they have been there since, through three generations.
The inside of the container is decorated with team posters stapled above the bar. They’ve had Christmas trees there, and during bad weather the party goes on inside the container, rain pounding the roof.
They’ve never won Tailgater of the Year, or even Tailgater of the Game.
“They can’t find us out here,” says Donna, who went to Presentation High School, while her husband graduated from Riordan.
All this history will not be going to Santa Clara. The Francos will leave it at the ’Stick, but there is something else they would like to take with them: their orange seats from inside the stadium. Not just any seats, but the precise four chairs they have been sitting in since 1971 — section 35, row C, seats 5 and 6, and the same seats one row back.