An August evening in a small public park in San Francisco’s Mission District. Neighborhood kids playing soccer. A group showed up, saying they had reserved the field for an hour, from 7 till 8pm. They looked like prosperous white guys, an impression their tech-company Tshirts did not dispel.

The reaction was negative, a bit raucous, and caught on video, by someone who knew there’d be pushback. The video begins with a sotto voce intro: “6:55. Homies are playing. They’re waiting for the field at 7. It’s about to go down.”

“They” – soon to become widely known as the “tech bros” – wanted people off the field so they could play. (They were trying to have a Dropbox-versus-Airbnb game, but they were wise enough not to say so.)

The players who were already there didn’t want to go. They didn’t see why they should. One amusing moment comes when one of the park habitues, working to keep a straight face, demands to see a tech bro’s papers.

“I don’t have it, Conor has it,” the bro says, but that isn’t the point. “It doesn’t matter if there is a piece of paper,” says another (older) regular. “If you want to play pickup, play pickup like the rest of us.”

The tech bros had paid $27. Also not the point. “Just because you got money, and you can pay for the field, you don’t get to book for an hour, to take over these kids’ fucking place. It’s bullshit.”

There’s a cred-against-cred moment. The regular asks “How long have you been in the neighborhood, bro?” At this point voices overlap. As one bro blurts “Over a year!” we hear others saying “Who gives a shit?” and “Who cares about the neighborhood?”

Says the regular (who’s lived there 20 years), “We will share with you. Why don’t you get a team, and we will play 7-on-7.” Show-me-your-papers kid says, “Why don’t we all just play?” A bro exclaims, “I would love to play!”

But things don’t settle down yet. Because the plan was not 7-on-7, it was the Dropbox v. Airbnb match. Unfortunately, the documentation for the reservation appears, and is waved around by a bro saying “Read it! Read it!”

“I know how to read. I’m an educated person,” says the regular in whose face the paper is being waved. There’s what looks like a dismayed I-never-said-you-can’t-read mumble from the paper-flourisher. “You guys think that just because you have money you can buy the field and take over the field.”

Paper flourisher is upset. He turns away, toward the camera. “This is really awkward! And weird! It’s like, we’re part of the community, and we’re trying to play,” he says. “This is disastrously weird.”

The regular proposes compromise again. “Take the field and get your team and we can play 7-on-7. Or you guys can just have this standoff for the next 30 minutes.”

The video ends here. They apparently did manage to compromise and play.

Neighborhood kids and adults have played soccer on the field for years, even when it was an unsuitable paved area. A few years ago, Rec & Parks fixed it up. Earlier this year, they declared people could reserve the field on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. For a fee. Not that regular users of the park agreed.

Some say that a few hours two nights a week leaves “96 percent of the time” available for the regular pickup players. That’s nonsense, since most of that time isn’t available for anyone who goes to school. Or has a job.

The tech bros began by operating in good faith. Look, here’s a system for reserving the field. Let’s do it. Okay, now we have reserved and paid. The field is ours. …whoa, is there a problem?

Afraid so. The regulars never accepted a reservation system, let alone a paid reservation system. It’s a city park, paid for by taxes. People in the neighborhood have a long tradition that lets everyone play, and they’re not willing to lose that because Rec & Parks sees a chance to boost their operating budget.

This quarrel was created by Rec & Parks. They started a reservation system without getting acceptance from the park’s regular users. That put the tech bros in the unexpected position of trying to enforce an unpopular new policy.

The tech bros were set up. The regulars were railroaded.

In September the video started getting a lot of play on SF-area websites. The tech bros looked bad. One, a Dropbox employee, apologized on Twitter, apparently mostly for the “Who cares about the neighborhood?” comment.

Deeply sorry about the Mission Playground incident. I do care about my community.

And

What I said was insensitive and embarrassing to both Dropbox and me. In case it helps, we worked it out that day so everyone got to play.

The second is much better than the first. It names the problem, and uses the active voice. “What I said” is always superior to referring to “the… incident.”

Dropbox also issued a statement:

We love San Francisco and are grateful to call it home. That’s why we were disappointed to learn that a couple of our employees weren’t respectful to this community. The employees involved are embarrassed and have apologized. We’re sorry, and we promise to do better.

That’s okay, but it’s vague. How will they do better? Employee indoctrination sessions? Putting together a kick-ass dance troupe for Cinco de Mayo? Building a soccer field on pontoons to float in San Francisco Bay? Investing in new affordable housing?

No apology came from Rec & Parks. A spokesperson said “The department has long recognized that our city has limited open space for recreation. We definitely lack playfields for both adults and youth to play; we encourage all our park users to respect one another and share our parks.”

Encourage how? How does instituting pay-for-play time constitute respect for “all” park users when some can’t afford to pay to use public facilities for games that have always been free?

On October 16, (following an exciting demonstration at City Hall) Rec & Parks said they were abandoning the reservation scheme at Mission Playground. “Our first priority is kids. We are always striving to balance different types of play.” Kids, balance. How nice.

Airbnb put out a statement, which also referred to a recent complaint that one of the tech bros kicked one of the regulars during the eventual game.

We want to apologize for the Airbnb team at the Mission Playground. Enhancing the neighborhoods and the cities we serve is our top priority and these employees didn’t live up to our values. We have reminded everyone on our team that we all have an obligation to uphold our shared values every day, no matter where we are. This incident took place several months ago and everyone ended up sharing the field. We all agree that our team should have handled this entire situation differently, but no physical altercation took place.

‘We shook our fingers at everybody! We were all Tsk tsk! Values! But that was ages ago. And everybody played nice. Values! THERE’S NOTHING TO SEE, bye!’ That doesn’t even match DropBox’s vague pledge to do better.

The larger problems in San Francisco that led to the animosity that cropped up on the soccer field are still there. At Mission Playground the players eventually managed to play together. A stupid policy got changed. It would be nice if these examples of willingness to adjust to others set a course for solving some of the city’s problems.