Pokémon-inspired skateboards, jazz bands, burlesque dancers — San Francisco was catching ’em all.
Hours before last Thursday’s San Francisco Giants game at Oracle Park, eager fans lingered near the gates. They weren’t waiting to see the game, or to catch fly balls. Instead, they came to catch Pikachu at Pokémon Worlds Night — a Giants celebration of Pokémon fandom with a Pikachu-Giants jersey giveaway and a dazzling post-game drone show.
The night included a stadium-sized sing-along of the Pokémon theme song, and Giants players huddling in the dugout to rip open packs of Pokémon trading cards and compare custom airbrushed Charizard cleats.
These festivities helped kick off San Francisco’s citywide embrace of the Japanese anime juggernaut, which took over the town Friday through Sunday for the Pokémon World Championships and PokémonXP hosted at Moscone Center.
The event — an annual rotating spectacle featuring the globe’s largest Pokémon gaming tournament, a fan convention, and experiential activations galore — attracted over 50,000 badged attendees and nearly 3,000 competitors from across 54 countries…