San Francisco Kids Just Won a Playground Fight Against Tech Bros

The city’s recreation and parks department ends paid reservations after a video showing Silicon Valley workers kicking neighborhood kids off a soccer field goes viral.
Oct 17, 2014·
Kristina Bravo is Assistant Editor at TakePart.

It took a fresh wave of class war–inspired protests, but the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department changed park access rules on Thursday to protect locals from the scourge of tech bros paying to “reserve” public sports fields, unbeknownst to the kids who regularly play there.

The new rule comes after a video went viral in September that showed Dropbox and Airbnb employees asking Latino teenagers to leave a soccer field at Mission Playground. The tech workers, who were white, held up a permit to prove that they had paid $27 to use the area for one hour. The field, as the kids point out in the video, traditionally has been used for pickup games. At one point, the teens laugh when one adult says that he’s lived there for “over a year.” Another one is heard saying, “Who cares about the neighborhood?”

Almost 300 people protested outside City Hall on Thursday to ban reserving of the fields, reported The San Francisco Examiner.

“I used to think the parks were ours,” 15-year-old Hugo Vargas, one of the teens in the video, said at the rally. “Knowing that they’re selling our parks is not fair.... Mission Playground is not for sale."

Following the demonstration, Recreation and Parks General Manager Phil Ginsburg announced that after officials met with local teens and soccer groups, it was decided that permits to reserve the soccer field would no longer be sold.

“The most compelling suggestions came from the kids, who said, ‘This is a safe place we can come and play, and we feel like we need more time,’ ” said Ginsburg.

According to the League of Pissed-Off Voters, a San Francisco–based advocacy group, permits weren’t granted until the City Fields Foundation paid to install artificial turf in 2012. The park began selling reservations despite protests.

San Francisco residents have criticized the gentrification that came with the arrival of tech giants in Silicon Valley; the massive salaries and youthful zeal of their employees have meant a culture shift in many parts of the Bay Area. A report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in September revealed that the city is now the second-most-expensive place to live in the United States, just below Washington, D.C., and just above New York City. As of June 2014, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco was $3,120.

Dropbox has since apologized for the incident. Jean Denis-Greze, a Dropbox employee who appeared in the video, took to Twitter: