1459 18th Street #122San Francisco, CA 94107
415.234.3687
chris@soccerfours.org
soccerfours.org
October 17, 2026
The Honorable Daniel Lurie, Mayor, City and County of San Francisco
The Honorable Shamann Walton, Supervisor, District 10
Sarah Madland, General Manager, San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department
Re: Request for a Recurring Permit for SoccerFours at Franklin Square Park
Dear Mayor Lurie, Supervisor Walton, and General Manager Madland:
For ten years, Wednesday night at Franklin Square meant SoccerFours. From 2010 to 2020, we ran coed pickup games on a half-field at 16th and Bryant, one game at 7:00 and another at 8:00. Up to forty people played each hour, so on a full night eighty came through. They came from the Mission, SOMA, Potrero Hill, the Castro, Downtown and farther out. Some had played their whole lives, and some were still learning. That’s what earned us the SF Bay Guardian’s “Best of the Bay” in 2010 and San Francisco Magazine’s “Best of SF” in 2017. SoccerFours is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
What happened on that field went well past soccer. Several couples met at SoccerFours and later married, and we joke that their children are SoccerFours kids. For some of our players, SoccerFours is the only place they’ll play at all. They’re shy, or they don’t feel good enough for a regular pickup game, and they have played weekly for more than a decade.
In 2020 we stopped playing, like everyone else, to keep our players safe. While we were away, Rec and Park gave our Wednesday slot to another group. We came back in July 2022 and asked for it back, and we’ve been asking ever since. Rec and Park generally weighs a group’s history at a field when it renews permits, and that practice has kept the slot with its current holders. Our ten years there before the pandemic should count too.
Franklin Square is a heavily used pitch in the city, and a single SoccerFours session puts up to 40 people from all walks of life on a half-field for the full hour. The group in that slot now brings about 14. We’re at Beach Chalet today, and with 6 o’clock traffic out that way, it’s a hard trip for many of our players. We believe a lot of them would come back. We’d like to bring SoccerFours home to the field where it grew up: one hour a week, 7:00 to 8:00, on Wednesday or Thursday. Once our numbers return, we’d like to talk about the 8:00 hour.
We’d be glad to meet with you at your office(s) and discuss this more. Thank you for reading, and we hope to see you out there on a Wednesday night.
Respectfully,
Chris Hutchison
Founder and CEO, SoccerFours Inc.
415.234.3687 | chris@soccerfours.org
Jose (Pepe) F. Adriazola
SoccerFours player for more than 15 years
On behalf of the SoccerFours community