When the 49ers -- and Bob Dylan, Neil Young and the Grateful Dead -- Played on a High School Field
When I was a freshman and sophomore in high school -- before I was old enough to drive -- every weekday after football or track practice I would take a San Francisco municipal transit bus from my high school in the Sunset District to the corner of Haight and Stanyan streets.
That corner was the closest bus stop to St. Mary's Hospital, where my father worked as the chief pathologist.
He and I would commute from there to our home in San Rafael.
The intersection of Haight and Stanyan was also at the crossroads of two significant elements in San Francisco's 20th-century popular culture.
Four blocks east of there was 710 Ashbury, the house where the Grateful Dead had lived in the late 1960s. Two blocks south stood Kezar Stadium -- embedded in the corner of Golden Gate Park.
Kezar had been the 49ers' home field from their founding in 1946 through Jan. 3. 1971 -- when they lost the NFL championship game to the Dallas Cowboys.
It was also the stadium where my high school -- St. Ignatius College Prep -- played its home games under Friday night lights.
In fact, St. Ignatius and other San Francisco high schools had started playing football at Kezar long before the 49ers -- or the Grateful Dead -- existed.
Kezar was not built for professional athletes, but to serve the "youth" of San Francisco -- and to honor some literal 49ers.
Mary Kezar, a native San Franciscan, passed away in 1922. In her will, she left $100,000 for the construction of a memorial in Golden Gate Park to honor her mother and three uncles. She left it to her executors, however, to determine the exact nature of that memorial.
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