Super Bowl: Diehard fans — and some brand new ones — gather in downtown San Jose to cheer on 49ers
“Go Niners, do it for the Bay!,” Navii Sandhu exclaimed, as the San Francisco 49ers prepared to hit the field Sunday afternoon in Las Vegas for Super Bowl LVIII.
Sandhu and her friends were scanning for an open seat in the crowded San Pedro Square Market in downtown San Jose on Sunday afternoon, joining hundreds of others who flocked to downtown San Jose for the big game.
A lifelong fan, and San Jose resident, she was confident before the game started. “I’m thinking Purdy is going to bring it home,” she said, a big smile on her face as she referred to 49ers starting quarterbac, Brock Purdy. Her girlfriend and two close friends joined her — even though one is a Raiders fan.
Sunday wasn’t the first time she and her friends came to the popular downtown food court to watch a 49ers game; they watched the NFC Championship game here two weeks ago, and it she said it was even more crowded for that game.
Her best guess for the smaller crowd on Sunday? “I think we’re chalking it up to everybody went to Vegas,” she said.
Kunal Arora was also at San Pedro Square on Sunday, with three generations of his family. This is his second season as an out-and-proud 49ers fan, abandoning his hometown team the Philadelphia Eagles just last year, after a decade of living in the Bay Area. “I had to switch last year, when we played the Eagles, because this is where I live.”
The stakes were high for Arora: His birthday was last week, and he told his family he wanted to put off celebrating until after watching the 49ers’ fate in Las Vegas.
At San Pedro Social, a sports bar just around the corner, there was a line out the door all afternoon. The crowd erupted in cheers as the 49ers entered the field a few minutes before kickoff, quickly quieting down, punctuated by some boos, as the rival Kansas City Chiefs players entered the field.
Despite fitting in among the crowd of red-shirts and jerseys from a distance, the message on Taylor Rasmussen’s sweater distinguished her from the crowd wandering down the pedestrian thoroughfare on San Pedro Street.
“World’s Biggest Fan of Taylor Swift’s Boyfriend’s Team,” her sweater read, in contrast to the 49ers garb worn by her boyfriend and nearly everyone else walking by.
Rasmussen’s new, and tangential, enthusiasm for the NFL put her in good company, with many more young and female viewers expected this year because of the pop star’s relationship with Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.
“I’m not a big football person at all … I’m just an extreme Swiftie,” she said.
There were definitely some not-Swifties in the crowd; boos rang out in San Jose when the camera cut to the superstar, watching the game with friends in a luxury box.
While she might be lonely cheering for the Chiefs in the heart of 49ers country, she said she wasn’t taking the game too seriously. “It’s kind of just for fun.”
For Sandhu, it’s deeper than that. She’s been a fan of the 49ers for her entire life, and is very emotionally invested.
Two decades later, she was hoping Sunday afternoon to celebrate a 49ers Super Bowl win.