Mission Soccer Field Update: Rec & Park Kills Reservation System

The ripple effects from the Mission soccer field confrontation just keep coming. While the Dropbox tech bros tweeted their apologies per H.R.’s orders and gnawed on their viral humble pie all week, the real bad guys in the story have decided to mend their ways.

According toMission Local, Phil Ginsburg, Rec and Park’s General Manager, met with the Latino Democratic Club and decided to scrap the $27/hour reservation policy at Mission Playground. Admittedly, if two teams of seven are playing, it’s not that much per person, but if you’re a regular, that’s going to add up over time. There really shouldn’t be deterrents like that against using public spaces that we’re all paying for already, especially when the neighborhood’s newcomers are, generally speaking, in a better position to fork it over than many longstanding members of the community

Further, Rec and Park will create community councils that make sure a given park’s rules aren’t arbitrary but actually reflect how a community uses its open space. Perhaps most importantly, the rules will be posted in all the languages spoken in that neighborhood.

It’s not all good news, however, as the initial argument, which seemed to have ended more or less amicably, allegedly may have gotten a bit violent once the camera stopped and both teams stuck to half of the field each. A youth involved in the dispute claims that someone on the field kicked him in the back, so this story isn’t over yet.*

Ultimately, what we need are more parks. Dolores Park is wonderful even when it’s chopped in half, but the Mission – one of the densest, flattest residential neighborhoods in SF – is not exactly bursting with flat green spaces suitable for games. But Mission Playground, at least, is a slightly more level playing field now.

*A previous version of this story said that a Dropbox employee was the alleged kicker, but we were notified by a representative of Dropbox that the man in question is not one of their employees.

[Via: Mission Local]