SAN FRANCISCO — Hey, Bayyyyyy Arrrreeaaaa.
Super Bowl week is here, and with surprise presentations by two youth Poet Laureates, a Michelin-starred chef and a pair of rap royalty, the region left no doubt where the biggest spectacle in American sports was taking place during a 40-minute press conference to kick off the week of festivities Monday morning inside Moscone Center.
These proceedings can drone on with one local elected official after another, but Zaileen Janmohamed, the Bay Area Host Committee CEO who emceed the event, said they wanted to “do it different.” Mission accomplished: Surely no previous Super Bowl presser has included Too $hort dropping an F-bomb while E-40 leads a back-and-forth with the audience.
“There were two goals,” Janmohamed told the Bay Area News Group afterward. “No. 1, making sure the entirety of the Bay was represented geographically, but also, all of the parts that make the Bay Area special. People think about us as tech-only, and that’s important, but it’s not the entire story.”
The tech community was hardly shut out, just as it will feature prominently this week with the NFL’s first-ever Innovation Summit hosted by the BAHC on Friday. A robot, dubbed “Tron,” flanked all of the speakers and delivered a bottle of water to Janmohamed midway through.
Jed York, the 49ers president, touted Levi Strauss as “the original startup,” while Genentech CEO Ashley Magargee shared biotech’s local origin story.
The program concluded to the same soundtrack that Janmohamed used to take the stage: Too $hort’s Bay Area anthem, “Blow the Whistle.” The rapper invited visitors to the region to “pick a bridge and go across, take a little tour … and don’t be scared of Oakland, we’ll take care of you.”
He and his blinged-out companion then taught the gathered media some local lingo, including Too $hort’s “favorite word,” which we can’t print here. The expletives were all part of the experience curated by Janmohamed, who said, “We want them to be themselves.”
“It was a concept early on to make sure music was represented and you can’t talk about music in the Bay without having those two here,” she said. “The most amazing thing is when you call them to do something like this, to represent the Bay, it’s an immediate yes.”
Dominique Crenn, the Michelin-starred chef behind Atelier Crenn, touted the importance of immigrants to the region, sharing her story of moving from France and finding the inspiration to eventually open a world-renowned restaurant, before introducing Aisha Rae McCullough and Karan Gupta, San Francisco’s two youth poet laureates.
“What I love most about San Francisco is the people,” Crenn said. “Curious, creative, resilient. A city that believes in freedom. Freedom is a good word to use nowadays.”
McCullough and Gupta recited a poem, printed in full below, that paid tribute to the beauty, the energy and the people of the Bay Area. Hearing it for the first time, Janmohamed said it gave her “goosebumps.”
Crenn wasn’t the only representation from the region’s famous culinary scene. Following NFL vice president Peter O’Reilly, 49ers president Jed York took the stage alongside offensive lineman Colton McKivitz and made sure to note the gift of Napa Cabernet Sauvignon he had delivered to O’Reilly’s hotel room.
McKivitz, a Midwesterner who now lives in San Francisco, recounted using its steep cityscape to train in the offseason. “Running up and down Kearney (Street) is as steep as it looks,” he said. “This city has made a huge impact on my life.”
McKivitz playfully noted that he had played in a Super Bowl before, but “granted, we didn’t win.” He wasn’t the only local athlete with jokes: Andrew Luck, the former Stanford quarterback who is now the football program’s general manager, thanked the NFL for the “cruel twist of fate” that led to the New England Patriots practicing in Palo Alto. When Luck was quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts, they were eliminated by the Patriots in consecutive postseasons.
While the 49ers won’t have the opportunity to play for the Super Bowl on their home turf, O’Reilly said that the game wouldn’t be here without the 49ers. Al Guido, who was promoted to CEO of the organization Monday morning, recalled sending the NFL gift packages imploring the league to return to the region after Levi’s Stadium hosted Super Bowl 50 in 2016.
By bringing the game back to the Bay Area, Guido said, the region will see $500 million in economic impact and 10,000 new jobs created, citing reports from Boston Consulting Group commissioned by the Bay Area Host Committee.
“Come on, you’ve gotta come back,” Guido told the NFL. “But you need a team to pull that off. I’m proud to say the entire Bay Area caucus signed up to support our effort.”
Poem by San Francisco youth poet laureates
I can sit and stare at this bay for a lifetime
The lilt and swing of the waves licking the shorelines
The hum of the sails speeding by
The way the fog tumbles down the hills
Sweeping up once it clashes with the valleys filled with glistening, golden grass
I can sit and stare and listen and taste this bay for a lifetime
Look out across its impossible span
Listen to the backdrop of hip hop, R&B, jazz, funk
Whatever music bumps as the car passing by’s suspension springs
The taste of salty fog or sourdough
The red taillights ebbing and flowing like the tide
We’re suspended 200 feet above this bay
We’re connected by these bridges
These ties between the haven of San Francisco and the trails of Marin
The faithful of Santa Clara and the roots of Oakland
We’re connected by these bridges
By these places
By these people
A mosaic with tiles from every corner of the world
I can sit and stare and smell and feel this bay for a lifetime
The sharp orange and white points that protude from the clouds
The soft peaks and valleys that surround the water
The rise of the tide
Of my breath
Of our city