In the days leading up to the final series of professional basketball in Oakland, the yellow and blue of the city’s beloved home team, the Golden State Warriors, shone from every corner.
But in just a few weeks, Oakland will no longer be able to call the Warriors its own. When this season ends, the team will make the move across the bay to the $1bn Chase Center in San Francisco. The Warriors leave behind Oracle Arena, their home for the past 47 years, and a stalwart fanbase all too familiar with being left behind in an ever-changing world.
With San Francisco as the epicenter of a tech-wealth earthquake that struck the cities of this region in disproportionate ways, it’s hard for some longtime Oakland residents to not feel some resentment. After all, they loved the Warriors when no one gave them a second glance. Now, at the height of their success, they move across the bay to El Dorado.
The fervor that usually accompanies the Warriors’ championship runs feels tempered in Oakland this time around; the excitement joined with a dash of melancholy and unease. But this is also a city that loves deeply and, at times, unreasonably. And Oakland will cheer for its home team.
The feet of millions of Golden State Warriors fans have paraded through the Coliseum Bart station over the years, but come next year, no longer. Construction has left the spartan interior half-gutted and chaotic, dust swirling around the large Steph Curry ads splashed on the walls. In the hours before tipoff for game 1 of the finals, the workers shoveling dirt near the fare gates accounted for the majority of the activity.
Byron Glover sat a level above the noise on the platform, a bright Golden State cap propped upon his head and a pragmatic outlook for the team he has followed almost his entire life. An extravagant championship ring flashed in the place of where a wedding band would typically be situated.
“It’s not a bad thing,” the 56-year-old East Oakland resident said of the move. “They’re still going to have support from the people of Oakland, but they’re going to have a new facility, new friends, different fans. They’re still going to sell out crowds because there are so many people in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area that support them. But it’s not going to make a difference for the city of Oakland.”
Glover was able to attend a few games this season, but he doesn’t foresee that happening when the team moves to San Francisco. “The [ticket] prices are going to go up,” he said. “You got people in the higher class of living who are going to buy the tickets, so there aren’t going to be too many people who can afford to go. There are a lot of people who are retired, season ticket holders, who don’t have nothing to do. The middle class, we still have to work for the same money, pay our bills, and all that.”
That doesn’t mean he’s giving up on the Warriors.
“We still got to go with the flow,” Glover said. “You been a fan for years, not just getting on the bandwagon, following the Warriors when they just started winning. You got to remember they weren’t always winning. You’re a real Warriors fan.”
He continued: “A lot of people will say, ‘Oh, forget the Warriors, they’re going to San Francisco.’ Well, they came from San Francisco. It’s just too bad for the city of Oakland. It’s just like the Raiders,” the Oakland NFL team headed for Las Vegas. “It’s the same thing. That’s how it goes. That’s life.”
On game days, Tony Scott represents, sporting a bright yellow Warriors shirt under his Marriott bellhop uniform. For 36 years, the 58-year-old has worked at the Oakland Marriott City Center, in the same building as the Warriors headquarters, sharing the space with the team he’s cheered for since 1975.
“When they were not good, I had people upstairs that would give me tickets,” he said. “Now that they’re good, they pass by like it’s nobody’s business. They’re a great team so everybody’s on the bandwagon.”
Scott laughed. “Oh, you’ll like this story. I can’t say what year it was, but there was one year, the Celtics, and [their player] Ray Allen, you heard of him? Around 7.30, I said, ‘What are you doing?’ And he said, ‘I’m going to play golf. I’m playing the Warriors.’ The next night, he said, ‘I’ll be in bed. I’m playing the Lakers. I’m playing Kobe [Bryant].’ Look how far we come!
“There was a time when teams would come here and say it was an opportunity to show how good their players were because they were playing the Warriors. That’s over. The Warriors are one of the best teams and they play together.”
Scott knows the games will only be a trip across the bay away, if he can afford tickets. But he can’t help but wonder whether Oakland should have leveraged the presence of the Warriors more to create jobs and opportunities for more people.
“Before they decided to go over to San Francisco, we had an opportunity to build,” he said. “There’s nothing at the Coliseum. You go over to San Francisco, if I’m married, I have the opportunity to have my wife come watch the game for a minute, maybe do some shopping, there’s Fisherman’s Wharf. There’s things to do. That’s why they’re going to San Francisco.”
Hats line the shelves at the back of a small space in Old Oakland known as BOSK. The apparel store is one of the few that stocks wares emblazoned with “The Town”, a proud nickname to rival “The City” of San Francisco. The Warriors have sported the name on their jerseys in recent years, a gesture for East Bay fans after news of the team’s move broke.
Picking up a hat labeled “Oakland Warriors”, a customer lamented: “They were never called this, were they?”
The team had represented The Town for four decades, and their fans had turned Oracle Area into “Roaracle”. But after leaving San Francisco in 1971, they didn’t take their new city’s name and instead became the Golden State.
She bought the hat anyway.
The store manager, Saaliahah Mays, says a lot of people have come looking for the Oakland merchandise to hold on to their team despite the move. “We all want to make sure that we have something that lasts. That represents that they were a part of our community at some point in time,” she says.
For Mays, an Oakland native who says she is not hugely into sports, the move has been bittersweet. The team has had a marked effect on the area, offering not just local pride but also community service. That will continue after their departure: the team’s old practice space will be devoted to youth camps and not-for-profit organizations.
Still, with the team’s move to wealthy San Francisco, “I feel like we are taking two L’s,” Mays says. “It was the same thing with the Raiders.”
“It’s deep,” she says. “But we just have to roll with it. They still represent the Bay Area – we are still a part of it.”
After this season, the Oakland Warriors merch will be phased out. The store, Mays says, will still sell Golden State merch. “We are still going to support them,” she adds. “But for right now, we are trying to keep it at home for as much as we can”.
Cafe Van Kleef in downtown Oakland is not a sports bar, but it’s an Oakland bar, and the years that the proprietors weren’t arguing with their cable company, they made a point to pull down the big screen and show the championship games.
But next year? When the Warriors are in San Francisco? Will the bar air the games then?
“Probably,” a bartender, Rick Eggers, answered at first. He’s been a Warriors fan since he arrived in Oakland in 1989, and it’s hard to just cut those ties.
But he’s also Oakland, through and through.
“I’ve been a Warriors fan, I’ve been to all their games, and now that they’re leaving, I’m not going to their games any more,” he said. “But I want to see them win in Oakland once more before they leave.”
The dark, eclectic bar that specializes in fresh-squeezed greyhound cocktails was lively the afternoon before game 1 of the finals, with regulars filing in and greeting Eggers by name. He mulled the question as he helped out each patron along the bar.
“I think it’s sad for the people who bought season tickets all these years and can’t afford it there,” he said after a beat. “They were from San Francisco so I understand it and all, but it hurts to see them go.”
“San Francisco, they want everything,” a woman hollered from a few seats down.
“We’re going to miss them here,” Eggers said.
“They’re going to miss us more,” the woman retorted. “There are just some things money can’t buy.”
So would the bar show a Warriors championship game, even after the move to San Francisco? Within 15 seconds after his first answer, Eggers had changed his mind from “probably” to “probably not” to a strong “I doubt it”.
“They abandoned us,” Eggers said. “They abandoned Oakland. And I’m an Oakland person. I’m sticking to Oakland.”
