How to trash talk the San Francisco 49ers: A service guide for Eagles fans

Unlike our relationship with the Dallas Cowboys, Philadelphia doesn’t have a long-standing rivalry with the San Francisco 49ers.

That could make razzing the team and fans we’re facing in the NFC championship game Sunday difficult. But friendly trash talking is an oratory tradition among our sports fans in Philly, one we can’t just let slip through our fingers because we don’t have a beef with someone.

Since saying “San Francisco sucks!” takes too long and doesn’t have the same ring, with the help of some of our readers, we offer this handy guide of burns Eagles fans can pull out of their back pockets to trash talk the 49ers.

In 2014, the 49ers moved its home stadium from Candlestick Park in San Francisco to Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara — more than 40 miles away.

That’d be like the Eagles packing up shop in South Philly and peacing out to Pottstown. Not only would the entire city revolt, nobody in Philly would ever allow the team to continue calling itself by the same name (”Oh, you’re the Philadelphia Eagles? What section you from? Montco?!?! Get outta here!”).

Not only is Philly a hyper-local city, we also don’t shroud ourselves in blankets of lies. Go home to Santa Clara, “San Francisco” 49ers.

Once you’ve established to opposing fans that you know their team isn’t from where they say they’re from, you may proceed trash-talking San Fran and the Bay Area as a whole.

When doing so, please refer to the city as San Fran or Frisco because locals apparently hate that.

According to a 2018 survey of Bay Area residents, 41.5% said they most often refer to their city as San Francisco. Only 9% call it San Fran and only 4.5% call it Frisco (other responses included The City and SF).

If you polled Philadelphians, 95% would say they call this city Philly 110% of the time. Why? We’re not fancy or pretentious. We know we’ve got a great full name, but Philly just rolls off the tongue and better encapsulates our attitude.

Former 76ers president of business operations Chris Heck learned this the hard way when he received a heck of an awakening in 2020 after saying the word Philly was “lazy and undersells the city.” The public backlash to his comment was so fierce, he was forced to apologize.

Philly, Philly.

Joseph P. Klein, an attorney and Center City resident, suggests Eagles fans rib San Fran fans by pointing out that Philly has “Half the housing cost, twice the attitude.”

Once a bastion for hippies and free love, Frisco is now home to techies and obscene prices.

According to NerdWallet.com, the cost of living in Frisco compared to Philly is 76% higher. Here, the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment hovers around $1,500, while the same apartment in San Fran would rent for around $3,700.

At those prices, you couldn’t even afford a flower for your hair out there anymore.

Meanwhile, Philly remains one of the more affordable cities on the East Coast and it retains the attitude it’s always had — hardworking, passionate, and honest. While San Fran is sometimes portrayed as having a too-cool-for-school attitude, Philly’s never been too cool for anything. We’ll climb greased poles, run into pillars, and tattoo this city all over our chests. Go Birds.

While the original run of Full House ended in 1995, it remains one of the most popular shows ever set in Frisco. Meanwhile, Abbott Elementary and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, both set in Philly, are currently on the air, consistently repping the Eagles, and killing it.

In light of this, Michael Hanisco, senior digital content manager at Visit Philly, plans to lean “pretty heavily” into Full House memes to taunt Frisco fans.

The opportunities are endless. When a 49er gets sacked, Eagles fans can yell out “You got it dude!” or if a player does something shady, throw them a “How rude!” And, no, the Eagles will not “Have mercy” and we won’t “Cut it out.”

The 49ers mascot, Sourdough Sam, is a bearded gold miner named after a type of bread.

You know what loves to eat crusty bits of bread for breakfast? Birds.

We suggest Sam the Sourdough starter stay far away from Swoop, who is obviously the far superior mascot in this matchup. Swoop doesn’t spend his time prospecting for gold, he spends it prospecting for Super Bowl rings.

In a poetic response to our call-out for ways Eagles fans can trash-talk San Fran, Philly-based freelance writer John Semley, who occasionally pens pieces for The Inquirer, gifted Iggles fans with a stream-of-consciousness thread of trash talk that touches on everything from earthquakes to the cofounder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers.

Semley wrote: “make fun of their seismic fault lines; taunt their proclivity for rococo italianete architecture; good old fashioned hippie-bashing; mocking lawrence ferlinghetti. the possibilities are endless.”

Indeed, the possibilities are endless, Philly. So go forth, engage in the age-old tradition of trash talking, but please, be good-natured about it. Frisco fans have enough to be scared of already. Their team is playing the Eagles on Sunday.