19 hours ago
- Sport
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘Gamefying garbage': S.F. volunteers clean Kezar Stadium for soccer team's matches
Among the people lined up for entry at Kezar Stadium in Golden Gate Park for Sunday afternoon's soccer match between San Francisco City Football Club and Davis Legacy was Monica Weaver, who came specifically for the trash.
She likes to clean it up. 'Cigarette butts, cans, fruit peels, Starbucks cups,' she said excitedly, watching people carry in all sorts of items likely to be discarded in the stands. 'Pizza boxes come in and you know you'll get a chance to clean it up.'
But for that, Weaver, who is 33 and works in HR, had to wait through an entire soccer match. That's because she wore the black gloves and yellow vest of Refuse Refuse SF, the volunteer San Francisco street cleaning brigade, which has a deal to clean Kezar both before and after the SF City games. In exchange, members get free tickets, which normally cost $12 each.
No one leaves early — they are more serious about litter cleanup than they are about watching soccer.
Both Refuse Refuse and SF City aspire to the Japanese model that fans pick up their trash before they leave the stadium, which inspired the partnership.
'It's people taking care of themselves,' said Steve Hagler, who was at Sunday's match with Julie Marcus. 'We expect city workers to do this for us but it feels good giving back.'
Management of the SF City team is serious about it too, because they are under obligation to leave the stadium in clean condition. If they don't, the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, which manages the 10,000-seat stadium, will send in its own crew and bill SF City at a rate of $82 per janitor per hour.
SF City wants to stay on good terms with Rec and Park because they are trying to hang onto their deal to use Kezar for home games amid news that a new professional team, Golden City Football Club, will soon put $10 million into the old place to make it a new home when it starts play in 2026 or 2027. Golden City is an independent club that will be affiliated with Major League Soccer.
SF City is a pre-professional team that touts itself as the oldest community-owned soccer club in the country. To be an owner costs $75 and brings with it both the chance to run for the board of directors and tickets to all seven home matches, played at Kezar.
They've been advised that when the new team clubs, they may be relegated to playing all but one home match at Boxer Stadium, a 3,500-seat soccer-specific facility in Balboa Park, in San Francisco's Mission Terrace neighborhood.
The club already has to pay $700 per game for bathroom cleanup and supplies, and can't afford stadium cleanup on top of that. So this season it joined up with Refuse Refuse, which gladly cleans up any location in the city for free.
'Refuse Refuse invokes community pride, and our whole thing is being community-oriented, so that's the synergy,' said Ian Blakely, creative director for SF City. 'Soccer is the beautiful game, and Refuse Refuse adds to it by beautifying our stadium.'
Last week Refuse Refuse bagged its one millionth gallon of garbage, going back to its founding by Vincent Yuen in April 2021, when litter proliferated on city streets during the pandemic shutdown. It now has 16,000 volunteers who mostly work afternoon cleanups in their own neighborhoods.
Refuse Refuse drops off the 13-gallon bags and mechanical pincers at designated street corners, where a neighborhood captain distributes them to volunteers who grab their gear at the appointed hour and fan out into the neighborhood. The filled bags are left at designated sidewalk garbage cans, and Recology trucks come along and collect them.
For Sunday's match a dozen Refuse Refuse volunteers were issued bags, gloves and a pep talk by Dan Milko, the organizer. 'Go for it,' he said as the crew circled the stadium post-match and started going through the seats.
It was their second game of the season, and they collected 10 bags of garbage at the first, so they were optimistic.
'I didn't realize there was a game. I thought we were cleaning the actual field,' said first-timer Jennifer Biederbeck, 'so this is a bonus.'
Sam Leshnick appreciated the free admission. 'I'm an avid soccer fan and this is a chance to clean Kezar which is my favorite stadium,' he said.
If it was a win-win for him, it wasn't for Weaver. She doesn't care about soccer and had never been to a game before working the first match of the season.
Sunday's match drew between 500 and 1,000 fans, some of whom pounded drums and sang San Francisco songs like 'We Built this City.' By halftime there was a long line at the concession stand, and all those clear plastic beer cups and food wrappers would soon be hitting the aisles, waiting for Weaver's gloved hand.
The final score was 2-0 SF City with 11 bags of garbage. The fans sang their victory songs, 'Muni Bus, Take Me Home' and 'When the Fog Comes Rolling In.' Weaver and the crew waited until the seats emptied out and then started climbing over them looking for lids and cups
'We get to watch trash accumulate and you know you'll get a chance to clean it up,' she said. 'It's a very niche thing. Gamefying garbage.'
