San Francisco City FC

I came across the club via a social media post claiming faux outrage over an "ice cream" inspired away shirt.

What I discovered is a community and volunteer-run club that is doing extraordinary things in the very heart of one of the USA's greatest cities.

And one I have instantly fallen in love with.

They claim to be the oldest community-run club in America and I'm simply going to quote, at length, their mission statement from their website - because it is genuinely inspiring (and when it comes to stuff like this I am probably the most cynical person on the planet). It goes like this:

"San Francisco City FC was founded on the principle that a local sports team should be an organisation ingrained in and reflective of the San Francisco community, rather than a business used for the profit of a select few. This means allowing fans to have control over how the club is operated and using sports as a vehicle to improve our city. The SF City FC Members Organisation pledges to do this through charity events, volunteer hours, free youth soccer programs, fundraising, and democratically representing our members’ interests.

Our goal is to grow in San Francisco and have both men’s and women’s professional teams, as well as free youth teams at every age level."

I love this. This is 100% what football should be about - inspiring the local community to come together and better itself.

Formed in 2001, the club today competes in USL2 - technically the fourth tier (?) of US football - it is a huge tier of 150 semi-professional clubs across the USA. But the newly elected mayor of SF has just turfed SFCFC out of their beautiful little stadium in the city's main park - to make way for his own (and his financial backer's) per project - a MLS 2 team (They've called it MLS Next Pro - which is a terrible name). Which is a chronic shame. Because there is little more SF than this team.

Taking inspiration from the German giants that have remained globally competitive while retaining fan control, they run the 50+1 ownership structure where fans will always own a majority stake in the club, with larger private investors welcome on board - but never overriding the fans.

That community feel comes through on their website and socials - in between offering free football classes (they call it "soccer" for some odd reason) they also put out warnings about ICE agents, Trump's Gestapo, being spotted in certain areas and warning locals to avoid their cruel, draconian and usually illegal brand of vigilante/racist justice. Well done, that club.

In addition their mascot is called Foggy (after the famous fog that rolls in off the Pacific and funnels through the Golden Gate). And their long term sponsor is the San Francisco Municipal Railway. All very wholesome.

So, enough of the praise. Let's get to the history behind the badge here - and the ice cream shirt... (which I am about to order...)

Sutro Tower

They have had a recent redesign which has stripped away the icon showing the famous Golden Gate Bridge and focused instead on the other icon on the badge - the Sutro Tower.

This three-legged, three-pronged, trident-looking thing sits atop a hill to the west of the city - allowing it to broadcast over the hilly terrain in that region and down into the city itself. For a long time it was the highest structure in the city - a landmark visible for miles around. It was built on the former property of the Sutro family, which owned a mansion overlooking the city.

Adolph Sutro

The Sutros themselves are worth a mention - their fortune began in the mid-1800s with Adolph Sutro, who had moved to San Francisco from Germany. He had a shop selling cigars and was struggling to pay rent when suddenly silver was discovered in the Comstock Lode - mountains about 2-3 days' carriage ride away in Nevada.

Sutro Tunnel Plan

Adolph packed his stock and moved out there - hoping to sell cigars to the miners. On arrival, however, he quickly learned of the problems the miners were having with underground flooding. Sutro saw a solution. He was going to dig a six-mile drainage tunnel.

Sutro Tunnel

He was able to muster up the financing by selling stock certificates in a new "Sutro Tunnel Company". The tunnel itself was then able to sell its services to individual mining companies who could connect to it, drain their mines, and reap the rewards. It could drain four million gallons of water a day and companies paid an average of $10,000 a day to use it.

Sutro Baths

Sutro became one of the wealthiest men in the West. He doubled that money and then some by ploughing the gains into San Francisco property and land - which also became a boom commodity. With the riches, he invested heavily in the city, building the Sutro Baths - at the time the world's largest indoor swimming complex.

His legacy can be seen today in the Sutro district - and in the name of one of SF's most iconic landmarks.

The radio tower itself was instrumental in bringing clear AM, FM and then TV broadcasting to the city. Owned by a consortium of broadcasters, it is operated on a non-profit basis to enable multiple companies to use it. America ushered in the mass-entertainment TV age - and while we all remember the Hollywood studios and superstars, it was a work team lugging large pylons up San Francisco's biggest hill that really allowed the format to thrive.

So that's the badge. What of the 2025-26 shirt that led me down this little rabbit hole in the first place?

Well, that is a homage to one of the city's most famous culinary exports... and it is also the most American thing you can imagine - the ice cream sandwich.

In 1928, a man by the name of George Whitney placed a scoop of creamy vanilla ice cream between two freshly baked old-fashioned oatmeal cookies, and then dipped the sandwich into dark chocolate. It caught on almost immediately, with early adopters claiming "This is it!" - and Whitney adopted the phrase, and so was born the famous "IT'S-IT" Ice Cream Sandwich.

Playland-at-the-Beach

It was sold for almost four decades exclusively inside San Francisco’s legendary Playland-at-the-Beach amusement park. The park boasted rides, games, shows and other attractions - and the IT'S-IT ice cream provided the fuel for generations of Californians to make the most of the rides (it also gives flashbacks to that amazing video game Theme Park - where if you put the ice cream shop before the roller coaster everyone threw up their ice cream cones after getting off the ride. Side note: the man behind this innovation was a kid called Demis Hassabis, who now runs Google DeepMind and has a Nobel Prize).

IT'S-IT ice cream sandwich

When Playland was demolished in the early 1970s, IT’S-IT sandwiches began being individually handmade in a small shop in San Francisco’s SOMA district under new ownership. The hunger for IT’S-IT exploded. In order to quench San Francisco’s craving for the ice cream treat, the company relocated to a larger facility in 1976 and today they export pre-packaged versions across the USA.

So there you have it. San Francisco City FC.

A fantastic community club. Paying homage to iconic television broadcasting infrastructure, cigar-selling silver mine-draining philanthropists - and quite possibly the most inelegant, yet somehow superbly authentic, San Francisco desserts of all time.

One of my new favourite clubs.

Uppa City.