This is the eighth time he’s driven to a Super Bowl city featuring the Patriots. He’s gotten inside the stadiums for two — both heart-breaking losses to the New York Giants. Duda’s hoping to break that run of bad luck, but hadn’t yet scored a ticket. His ceiling is $2,000, which Duda acknowledged is “too much,” but a pittance compared to the tens of thousands some fans have admitted dropping for Sunday’s game in Santa Clara.
“I think they’ll win,” said Duda, nursing a Miller Lite at the Red Jack Saloon. “No one’s giving them a chance.”
The Red Jack is a Boston sports outpost not half a mile from San Francisco Bay, where the decor reflects past Boston sporting triumphs: the Red Sox breaking the curse, UMass winning a national title in college hockey, Bill Russell with a handful of championship rings.
Of course there’s a nod to New York’s most reviled team, too. Behind the bar is a doctored photo of Saddam Hussein donning a Yankees cap.
The owners, Mark and Laurie Fusia, have Bay State roots: Mark grew up in Amherst, where his father was a college football coach; Laurie spent formative years in Sandwich, Newton, and Hadley.
As if to prove their New England bona fides, they produced various ephemera: a likeness of the stuffed bear from the Mark Wahlberg comedy “Ted” wearing a Pats T-shirt; a large piece of art consisting of bottle caps arranged to resemble the team’s “Flying Elvis” logo; a letter of thanks for their support signed by team owner Robert Kraft. (Mark Fusia says Kraft once stopped by the bar for a holiday party, where the billionaire was serenaded with a chorus of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”)
Like seemingly every transplant out here who originally hails from back East, Mark Fusia is adamant: “I still have my New England edge.”
He misses the food. San Francisco, he said, just started getting decent pizza five years ago. And nothing compares to the grilled sausages with peppers and onions outside Fenway Park.
Still, he does not miss the weather.
“I haven’t slipped on ice in 36 years,” he said. “It’s so nice.”
It’s a recurring theme among New England émigrés: they may miss the straightforward way people communicate in their native New England, but they don’t miss the back-aching shoveling and temperatures cold enough to make your nose run. Hard to argue with sunny and 60 in February.
Laurie Fusia conveyed an anecdote that to her illustrates the cultural differences between San Francisco and Boston. A patron invited the couple to have tacos on the beach. She responded enthusiastically. When her husband asked why she committed to that, as he wasn’t interested, she replied, “Mark, it’s California, you just say yes to everything and no one does anything.”
Here, she said, there is a niceness that can veer into fakeness. Back home, she would have been more honest.
“Why would I want to do that?” she asked of the prospect of tacos on the beach. “You get sand in your teeth. That’s gross.”
There were similar sentiments at another Boston sports redoubt across town. At the bar of the Connecticut Yankee on Wednesday evening was Christine Hunt, who grew up delivering the Globe in Lexington. Hunt, 47, moved to the West Coast for graduate school and stayed. She was converted, she said, when she made it through one winter without shoveling, although she does miss the energy of Marathon Monday. She now works in the wine business.
“Boston’s a little bit more, let’s say, they show their cards a little bit,” she said. “You know exactly who they are, you know where you stand. California, you got to be better at reading a poker face.”
From behind the bar, bobbleheads of Tom Brady and Larry Bird stare blankly ahead.
The Connecticut Yankee, understandably, drew Pats fans who still call New England home. Glen Shaw of New Ipswich, N.H., was hard to miss in a Wes Welker jersey. At 55, this is the first time Shaw has been to California. Going to a Super Bowl, he said, was on his bucket list, and he was able to get tickets through a family connection.
His prediction: Pats by 3. But he has his worries about the team: “The whole offense is a concern to me.”
Added Jay Lehtonen, a 50-year-old from New Hampshire who owns a construction company, “If they can get the running game going, we’re in trouble.”
The worries about the the Seahawks, however, seemed less potent than the support for New England, visible in the Patriots’ red, white, and blue that stood out in the crowd waiting for the baggage carousel at San Francisco International Airport, and inside a trendy cocktail spot in Russian Hill, and among tourists watching the barking sea lions at Pier 39.
As if to underscore the droves of New England expats flooding the city this week, Sasha Rizika, 23, who grew up in Brookline but moved here recently, was handing Patriots-themed placards sponsored by a Boston-based injury lawyer, one of which reads: “I ❤️ Drake Maye.”
Out here, she said, people are “a lot nicer,” before quickly adding, “I will never not be a Masshole.”
Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him @Danny__McDonald.