Apparently, you call it the Rossi Racquet Club.

For at least two years, this self-appointed group has been monopolizing the first-come, first-serve tennis courts at Rossi Park in the Inner Richmond, treating taxpayer-funded facilities like their personal country club. Their playbook is simple but brazen: show up early on weekend mornings, fill the courts with their members, then tell anyone else who arrives that "only doubles can be played" — a creative misreading of the actual park rules that conveniently ensures no outsider ever gets a spot.

The real rule? If someone's playing singles and others show up, you integrate into doubles so more people can play. The Rossi group has flipped this on its head, using it as justification to shuffle their own members endlessly through back-to-back sets from 8 AM to early afternoon. Every Saturday. Every Sunday.

This past weekend, they turned away a couple of kids who walked up wanting to play. Kids. On a public court. In a public park.

One local resident who lives near Rossi said they used to be able to walk on and wait 30 minutes to an hour max for a court. "Now, because of this exact cult, we can never get on," they said. Another SF resident recalled that these same individuals once yelled at parents for cheering too loudly at the nearby baseball field when their kids won a game. Real community spirit.

Meanwhile, the city recently started charging fees for court reservations through Rec & Park — meaning residents who play by the rules are now literally paying money to avoid the group that plays by none. That's a perverse incentive structure only San Francisco bureaucracy could produce: reward the squatters, tax the rule-followers.

Let's be clear about what this is. It's a private group extracting value from a public resource while contributing nothing to its upkeep. They collect dues. They screen members by skill level. They have "tons of rules." They are, for all practical purposes, a private club — except they don't pay rent, don't have a permit, and don't own a single square foot of the courts they dominate.

Rec & Park needs to enforce its own rules or explain why it won't. If a group wants to run an organized tennis program, great — get a permit, pay for court time, and stop pretending public infrastructure is your private amenity. San Franciscans already pay enough in taxes for parks they can't use. The least the city can do is make sure its courts are actually first-come, first-serve — not first-come, first-served-if-you-know-the-secret-handshake.