Dress Codes and Private Property

I was told that a fan brandishing a sign that said “Fire Millen” was escorted by security from the Detroit / Minnesota game last week. For the past two weeks 49er fans were told they couldn’t wear dumpyork shirts into the stadium. Why does an owner have the right to tell fans what to wear?

A security guard told our own columnist Hunter that [Candlestick] was private property and insisted he turn his shirt inside out.

Candlestick Park is most definitely NOT PRIVATE PROPERTY as states the following quote from sf49ers.com “The City of San Francisco owns and operates the stadium.” It is not private property it is public property and our fair dumpyorkster’s civil rights have been violated.

Maybe the mid-drifts of fourteen year old girls sporting belly button rings and butterfly’s tattoos across their tanned, dimpled, g-string flaunting lower backs may be considered excessively distracting to their fellow high school freshmen and therefore quite deserving of a High School dress code restriction. I could understand, hell I’m distracted just writing it, but demanding that a t-shirt be removed because it does no more than express opposition to the owner of a football team? It is not vulgar, obscene or even controversial – wear a dumpyork shirt to a Niner game and count how many high fives and compliments you get.


A cynic would say that rich guys have the power and that is just the way it is, but I can’t swallow it. We have a country based on a system of laws protecting individual rights and ascribing individual responsibility. That the size of York’s pocket book gives him the right to tell me or anyone else they can’t display their dumpyork t-shirt in a publicly owned and operated facility is WRONG. Wrong and we need to do something about it.

I said I wouldn’t go to a game last week, but I’m thinking things have changed. Maybe it is time for a little in-your-face action.