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Like some diehard 49ers fans, Candy Finley didn’t feel like leaving her house after the team’s crushing Super Bowl loss in February. So, for three months she didn’t. After flying home from the game in Miami, the longtime 49ers season ticket holder decided she wasn’t going anywhere.
This wasn’t an irrational act of a despondent fanatic, though. This was the calculated move of a longtime medical professional preparing for something far worse than her favorite team losing the big game.
Finley, a clinical nurse educator and admitted germaphobe, was already worried about a virus most of the country hadn’t even heard about in the early days of February. It’s why she spent so much time cleaning seats around her at the Super Bowl with disinfectant wipes.
“I’ve worked in nursing for 29 years and I told people then, ‘They don’t tell you everything because of panic or fear, but this is worse than what you think,’ ” Finley said by phone from her home in Temecula.
Fast forward seven months to our new reality amid the coronavirus, and the 49ers’ season opener Sunday against Arizona will be the first game since Levi’s Stadium opened in 2014 that Finley won’t be in her seat in Section 123, Row 34. It will sit empty like the rest of the nearly 70,000 seats not occupied by cardboard cutouts, because of state and Santa Clara County public health restrictions prohibiting large gatherings.
Watching the Chiefs open the season on national television Thursday night was a painful reminder to another impassioned 49ers season ticket holder, and not just because Kansas City denied the 49ers a Super Bowl victory months ago.
“They have fans there in their stadium! Why can’t we go?” said Abdul Momeni of Gilroy, before answering his own question. “I know it’s politics and (Gov.) Gavin (Newsom) isn’t allowing it, and rightly so. But it’s hard. You can’t even go right now.”
Life at Levi’s will become strange Sunday. (Even stranger if AirNow’s air quality index forecast of acceptable air proves inaccurate, and the game is delayed or postponed.) But no matter how unrecognizable the games will be without fans — the lifeblood of any NFL experience — the games will continue. No one is happy about keeping people out of stadiums, but most everyone understands why it has to be.
For some, it’s a matter of life and death.
“I’d love to be there, but I have a medical condition where if I was to catch COVID it would probably kill me,” said Richard Caviteno, a fan since 1980 and a season ticket holder who’ll still miss his home away from home in Section 143.
For others, it really isn’t.
“I can’t tell you how many phone calls and texts I’ve gotten from people asking me if I’m gonna be OK, or how am I gonna handle not being at the game,” said Finley, who has attended every 49ers game — home and road — over the last six years. “This truly is a dangerous pandemic, so I’d already decided I was going to forgo going to games anyway. I want everyone to stay safe.”
The 49ers are doing what they can to keep people safe, which means the fan ban will extend beyond the stadium. The team announced that, until further notice, the Levi’s Stadium parking lot will be closed before and after games to prevent tailgating or gatherings of any kind.
Nearby Tasman Drive will be closed late Saturday night and through the end of the game Sunday. Those using the San Tomas Aquino/Saratoga Creek Trail near the stadium will encounter detours.
Just to drive the point home, the man who runs Levi’s Stadium issued a friendly request to the fans to stay away.
“There will be a time for us to welcome you back to our facility,” said Jim Mercurio, the stadium’s executive vice president and general manager. “But if you’re thinking maybe it would be fun to go down and tailgate at Levi’s, please don’t do that.
“The gates are going to be closed, so save yourself some time. If you want to tailgate, maybe tailgate in front of your house?”
Don’t despair, though, 49ers fans. There are still some places where they’ll welcome you to participate in the communal experience of cheering on your favorite team. For the price of a beer, a burger or a slice, there are some old 49ers fans hangouts whose doors will be open for you Sunday.
Jackie Graham, the co-owner of the Sports Page Bar & Grill in Mountain View, is more used to the sport called “football” in her homeland of Ireland. She may not know the difference between a neutral zone infraction and a false start, but who cares? She’s got three 86-inch TVs outside on their patio that will be tuned in to the 49ers game, like always.
Plus, it sounds as if she’ll have room for more than a few socially distanced groups at her pub just off Highway 101.
“We’re in a little different situation than most other sports bars — we have a very large patio,” said Graham, who said, like many other bars and restaurants, her business hasn’t been good. “We’ll be open for the games and I’m sure we’ll have some people. But I don’t think we’ll have anything like a normal year where it will be really busy.
“I’m not complaining, though. Many people aren’t back to work and people are lacking funds.”
The folks running the Valley Tavern on 24th Street in San Francisco, another popular gathering spot for 49ers fans, got creative enough to allow fans to congregate again on Sundays.
By partnering with Paxti’s Pizza next door, Valley Tavern is compliant with the city’s COVID guidelines and is now considered a restaurant offering outside dining. The Tavern will have decent space for fans with 12 tables and five TVs set up on its patio.
But they’re expecting their regular influx of football fans, so you’d better get there early, warned manager Brittney Freed. Just not too early. In order to accommodate the maximum amount of fans, patrons won’t be able to stay for the morning game and the 49ers game.
“Otherwise the regulars would stay all day,” Freed said. “And we just don’t have the space.”
Still, no matter how comfortable the accommodations, the rabid 49ers fans will tell you there’s not a bar, restaurant nor a social-distanced watch party that can compare to being at Levi’s when the 49ers take the field.
A closer look at some diehards
Candy Finley may be a practical thinker when it comes to the health and the well-being of herself and others, but the 49ers have always brought out her impulsive side.
Beginning with her first glimpse of Joe Montana in 1981 when she was 13, Finley’s five-year allegiance to her father’s Steelers was over. “I told my dad, ‘Sorry, ‘ol blue eyes got me!’ ” she said while laughing.
After flying to some 49ers games for years, Finley went all in and became a season ticket holder when Levi’s opened. And, because the bubbly 50-something-year-old flies to team events and to all of San Francisco’s road games, she’s become one of the team’s more well-known fans.
Finley’s gregarious nature has led to many friendships with fellow fans, and even some 49ers family members. Since meeting Richard Sherman’s mother at a team hotel two years ago, Finley counts the 49ers star’s mom as a good friend.
She’s also continued her affinity for 49ers quarterbacks, but it’s not Jimmy Garoppolo who overtook Montana as Finley’s favorite player. That distinction goes to Colin Kaepernick. She brings a small Kaepernick doll to every game, and then supports him by taking a knee near her seat during the national anthem.
Instead of taking a knee in the name of social justice at Levi’s on Sunday, Finley will be supporting at home. She admits it’s going to be more than a little strange not to be there at the game.
“I’m a stadium fan,” she said. “I scream. I stand up. I make noise. I don’t do the ‘watch-on-TV’ thing very well.”
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The 49ers and family go hand in hand for Abdul Momeni. He and his wife, passionate season ticket holders for the past 14 years, are quite serious about the 49ers — and particularly the man who brought them five Super Bowl championships.
How many fans give their son a middle name like “Eddie-D”?
When life threatened to get in the way of this year’s 49ers season opener, the couple tried to do something about it. Well, perhaps it was Abdul who tried the most. When a doctor told his pregnant wife Nicol her baby wasn’t going to wait for her Sept. 18 due date, and he’d have to induce this Friday, Abdul had a counter proposal.
“Can we do the 14th, the day after the 49ers game?’ he asked.
The matter became moot when Nicol went into labor and gave birth last Saturday to a healthy, but two-week premature baby girl.
“I guess she just wanted to be here before the season started,” Abdul said with a chuckle about his new child.
For the record, Nicol nixed Abdul’s idea to name their baby girl Denise, after Eddie DeBartolo’s sister and the the team’s current owner. That’s OK, Abdul whispered into the phone, he’ll get another chance to honor the 49ers with their next kid.
The 42-year-old Momeni, who’s been a 49er fanatic since he was a little kid growing up in Hayward, has missed just one game in 15 years — for family reasons. He attended his aunt’s funeral.
He’s planning to host a small tailgate party in front of his house. Among the few guests is former 49ers defensive lineman Quinton Dial, a friend from back in the days when Momeni owned a restaurant in Fremont.
Nonetheless, Momeni hasn’t totally given up on the idea of being inside Levi’s for the game.
“I have all my game gear ready to go, just in case they have a last-minute change,” he said.
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This fall marks the 40th anniversary of Mary Starks’ long-distance love affair with the 49ers. She’s been following them since she was a teenager in Southern California, when she and her godfather would sit and watch 49ers games together.
When he passed away in 2007, Starks vowed to carry the torch from him as an over-the-top 49ers fanatic. Anyone who’s sat near Starks during a game can probably vouch for her zeal on game days.
Starks, who lives in Bellflower, admits she’s in denial about the drastic changes to the 49ers home game routine she’s followed religiously for nearly a decade. As of Thursday night, Starks still hadn’t canceled her flight to the Bay Area she booked long ago for the opener on Sunday.
“I keep asking myself, ‘Is this really happening?’ ” Starks said during a phone interview. “It’s always fun. It’s exciting. It’s something to look forward to. Now it’s a bummer and it’s frustrating.”
She said she’s been invited to a social-distancing 49ers watch party with a group of friends on Sunday. She told her friends she’d be at the party to yell and cheer along with them. But deep inside, Starks knows better.
“Knowing me, I’ll probably just sit and watch the game by myself,” Starks admitted. “That way when I start crying because I’m not at the game, no one will notice.”