VIDEO: Soccer Field Reservation Flap Pits SF Neighbors Against Dropbox Techies In Caught-On-Camera Quarrel
SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) -- Video showing a group of Dropbox employees trying to get a group of kids using a San Francisco soccer field to move after they reserved the field on a city-sponsored app has quickly gone viral. The video depicts increasingly acrimonious relations between long-time city residents and newly rich techies.
In occasionally heated moments, the September 25, 2014 video depicts a spectrum of emotions from territorial issues, to a proposal that the techies share the field, and even play soccer with the locals.
WARNING: Offensive language may be heard on the raw video.
At one point, a person is heard saying, "who cares about the neighborhood" in response to a challenge over how long the techies have lived here.
Rudy Vancorner said he was there when the video was taken. He said at that time of the night there are normally pickup games.
"Everybody in the park was trippin because this is a neighborhood park, and it's being reserved?" Vancorner told KPIX 5.
Jerry Velasco, recreation supervisor with San Francisco Recreation and Park said there are times when the field can be reserved. "On Tuesday and Thursday nights, which are the only two days of the week permitted, from 7 to 9 o'clock at night," he said.
The department downplayed any clash. "So it had nothing to do with the techs, or the people in the community, no. It was nothing at all. It was about 'I have my time, I want my time,' and that's it," Velasco said.
In any other city, or time, this would have been a simple argument over a ballgame. But in the throws of the San Francisco tech boom, an app can turn a soccer field into a flashpoint for a culture clash.
"It belongs to the neighborhood, not to a person that's: 'I'm paying money and I reserved it,'" Vancorner said.
Vancorner said disputes over reserving the field has already happened several times in the past month.
Dropbox responded to the incident, saying "The employees involved are embarrassed and have apologized."
Reserving the field costs about $5 per player per hour.
