New England Patriots fans in San Francisco have a silent but powerful player on their side come Super Bowl Sunday: Rob Gnomekowski.
Named for Patriots four-time Super Bowl champion Rob Gronkowski, who officially retired last year, Gnomekowski is a ceramic gnome, 10.5-inches tall, weighing 1.5 pounds, with a white beard, button nose, and piercing eyes who lives on the top shelf at Connecticut Yankee in Potrero Hill, a bar and something of West Coast refuge for Boston sports fans and allied Massholes.
“He moved in from the garden to the top of the bar. He’s front and center,” Jon Broyer, Connecticut Yankee’s bar manager, told me during a recent visit. Gnomekowski “overlooks all of our fans,” he said. “People take pictures with him, he’s like our rabbit’s foot.”
Housed in a wooden, sunbaked blue building with red, white and navy trim on the corner of Connecticut and 17th Streets, Connecticut Yankee is more than a sports bar. It first opened in 1907 as Hilda’s Saloon, built in part from wood salvaged from the Great Earthquake, according to SF Heritage. The interior, though, is undeniably Beantown, with walls covered with memorabilia celebrating the Bruins, Red Sox, Celtics, and Patriots. (Only the framed photos of Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh near the entrance, and occasional items of Bay Area teams, nod to its San Francisco location.)
When a Boston team isn’t on the TVs, it can be a quiet place for an afternoon pint, the sunlight filtering through the bar’s big windows. During the Patriots’ regular season, about 150 patrons come to Connecticut Yankee every Sunday to watch games and, many of them being from Boston, curse a wicked lot.
When I stopped in on Tuesday afternoon, I met Echo, a dog belonging to one of the owners, who was sprawled like a white rug on the dark wooden floor. Broyer, who is from New London, New Hampshire, stood behind the bar with a Patriots bar mat in front of him, and wearing a crisp, gray corduroy Patriots cap. (He buys a new one every year.)
“Most everybody who comes in here grew up on the East Coast,” Broyer told me. “They want some place to feel comfortable, with basically nothing but Boston fans,” he said.
Broyer clarified that by “East Coast,” he really meant New England. Yankees fans, who sometimes drop in because of the bar’s name, are “way out of place, and they know it as soon as they walk in,” he said.
The establishment has been the Connecticut Yankee since 1989, and Boston sports has been good for business with 13 title wins: Red Sox (4); Bruins (1); Celtics (2); and Patriots (6). In that period, the Patriots alone have made the playoffs a whopping 23 times.
The bar serves a proper “clam chowdah,” meaning, primarily, not the tomato-y Manhattan variety. Broyer only sells the thick, creamy New England-style chowder, served with Westminster Bakers Co. oyster crackers from Rutland, Vermont.
Overseeing the festivities will be Gnomekowski, whose Connecticut Yankee career was nearly cut short in 2017, when he was abducted from the garden by a drunk patron. An image of the missing gnome on a milk carton was printed on T-shirts and posters. The kidnapper’s sidekick revealed the theft, and assisted in Gnomekowski’s long journey home in time for the Patriots to win the 2018 Super Bowl. (The story made the local news.)
For the Super Bowl, Broyer hired security and will set up tables, portable toilets, and TVs outside. On Saturday, a traveling tailgate party from Boston has rented out part of the bar, and is selling tickets for an East Coast beer tasting and a raffle to win signed Patriots jerseys.
“He was part of the bar, he was taken, and when he was brought back we won the Super Bowl,” Broyer said. “Call it superstition, call it whatever. I mean, sports fans are superstitious.” Gnomekowski now sits on a shelf, safe and sound.
“He’s our special little guy now,” Broyer said. “We’ve gotta protect him.”
