Opinion: Why Fleet Week Can Suck It

Fleet Week 2025 is shaping up to be the city’s quietest—and thank fuck. This Feinstein-era Navy holiday has come roaring in every October since SF’s 38th mayor established the first in 1981. A swarm of synchronized fighter jets does deafening loops over downtown for three days in a row counting practice runs. The war machines roll onto their backs, showing their shiny underbellies like animals communicating trust. Screaming by your window like bats out of Hell, they’re called the Blue Angels.

If you, like me, despise Fleet Week, have hope. Trump’s government shutdown means expenses like these move to the back burner. One can imagine Trump taking delight in spoiling the fun for anyone in San Francisco. On the contrary—it’s possible that for once in the man’s miserable life, he may actually prevent headaches. This year, the Blue Angels could stay grounded. 

You hear the snarling above the surf at Baker Beach, during classtime, even in basement laundry rooms. There’s no escape. It demands your attention despite any lack or unwillingness to lend it. Fleet Week insists upon itself. All those low-altitude fly-bys dare you to entertain a thought, finish that sentence, remember the reason you entered the room. It sets off pets, triggers PTSD, resets your Word of the Day to “What?” Many are glad to do without the nuisance, especially myself. 

Fleet Week takes up room in everybody’s life. If you have important meetings on the horizon, you schedule them for the following week. Imagine taking a Zoom call during an airshow, coming off mute just to divebomb your cohort with revving jet noises. Work from home? Your options are to reduce or pause your workload while attack aircraft pilots flirt with the sound barrier overhead. If you just absolutely abhor the noise pollution, a weekend up north may be in order. 

It’s fair to assume the Blue Angels’ probable withdrawal from Fleet Week might disappoint a few tourists. However, it is business owners at Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf that are wringing their hands. To these tourist trap operators, Fleet Week is a last chance to squirrel away one more nut before winter. It should please those entrepreneurs to learn that Fleet Week itself will carry on as planned, albeit with less noise. 

But who comes to San Francisco just to have their conversation interrupted every three minutes by a plane? Apparently, more people than I’d assumed. NBC7 says, “it typically brings up to 3,000 military visitors and 1.2 million regular visitors, generating about $10 million in tax revenue.” The annual Folsom Street Fair reportedly attracts approximately 250,000 visitors by comparison. I’ll stick with the Fair. 

“I love the military” is always a huge red flag. From there it’s a short jump to the Roman Empire, then the Joe Rogan-sphere, to landing in alt-right territory. Can one appreciate Fleet Week and avoid complicity in the war crimes currently underway using American weapons and resources? Fleet Week beckons San Francisco’s resident patriots to take their first trip downtown since last year to lick boots. Watching SF embrace the military industrial complex for entertainment gives me “the ick,” as they say. The closure of Treasure Island Naval Station in 1997 ended nearly 150 years of Naval presence in the Bay Area. One might reasonably argue the Navy is integral to the city’s history, that there’s no harm in celebrating its contributions. 

To which I say, Sure—the Navy contributed plenty to the Bay Area. Like eddies of plutonium from ships irradiated in nuclear tests. Like radioactive isotopes dumped directly into the Bay or secret radiological experiments conducted on unknowing subjects. Treasure Island still triggers Geiger counters. “...soldiers were required to crawl through fields of radioactive ‘synthetic fallout,’ which winds carried to…Alameda and Contra Costa counties.” (SF Public Press). The plutonium-239 on Treasure Island will keep emitting radiation for 24,000 more years. 

My coastal elitism stems from an honest place. It hinges on severing ties to my Red state youth. I come from near Wichita, Kansas, a city whose greatest success was mass-producing airplanes that get you out of there as fast as possible. My grandmother was a Riveter during WWII, bolting B-29* bombers together at McConnell Air Force Base. I remember my older brother wanting to be a fighter pilot; he became a combat medic. My uncle was in Vietnam. My grandfather’s a retired Master Sergeant. Provided my nephew doesn’t enlist, my family’s military legacy will stay dead. 

Every year around this time, the city celebrates a different kind of man than you’d find at Folsom Street Fair. It’s a whole other type of phallic worship: a thirst for cannons, guns, explosive bursts, spectacular displays of hypermasculinity. Male homosexuality at its core is about men’s sexual reverence for other men (from my personal experience at least). What could be more masculine than muscular, regimented men in flattering uniforms, all too willing to prove themselves? 

Also, come on—it’s the Navy. The most isolated you’ll ever be is far and away at sea. You’re on a ship for weeks at a time with mostly, sometimes only, other men. Sometimes you can’t help but be a little gay. Talk with enough gay men and you’ll soon find someone whose dream that would be. My ex’s younger brother, who also identified as gay, bragged about the rough trade he pulled in downtown San Diego. Don’t worry, the Air Force can be super gay too (Top Gun anyone?). 

So to the Blue Angels and their airborne patriot pride parade, I say, Suck it. To Fleet Week I ask, Bring us (the gays) your tired, closeted masses yearning to fuck butts, then leave immediately. And to anyone I’ve offended, go watch planes take off at SFO if you’re really about that miracle of flight. Honestly, I can’t believe Fleet Week is still a thing. It’s like, suck a dick already. 

Author’s Note: The aircraft my grandmother worked on in the 1940s were not B-52s but actually B-29s; the former were not manufactured until after WWII. I’d like to think I misremembered this detail because rock lobster.