Only seven days before kickoff of Super Bowl 50 in Santa Clara. Here are more highlights and sidelights from my daily SB50 Countdown posts, which can be found at blogs.mercurynews.com/purdy.

I spent a day last week in San Francisco investigating construction of Super Bowl City, the pop-up NFL theme park in Justin Herman Plaza, just across from the Ferry Building. Free to the public. People are advised to take public transportation. Naturally, because I am a car-loving South Bay citizen, I drove. I parked in Lot A across McCovey Cove from AT&T Park and walked the mile and a half along the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building. Wasn’t bad. But my first amusing sight was passing by the Giants Dugout Store and in the front window (as well as occupying the entire front of the store) was Super Bowl 50 merchandise. So, even the Bay Area’s foremost baseball merchandising machine is cashing in on football fever.

The walk wasn’t too bad. Super Bowl City came into view as soon as I passed beneath the Bay Bridge. It’s hard to miss. The NFL and its corporate sponsors have plastered gi-normous mega-mammoth banners and imagery on many buildings above the plaza. (Some of the San Francisco supervisors are in a snit about this, which just makes them look silly. The mock-up drawings of Super Bowl City have been around for more than a year and the now-irate supervisors evidently didn’t read the fine print of the SB50 Host Committee contract, which they approved in 2013 and now are trying to reverse field.) Once inside Super Bowl City, some of the stuff looks very cool. All of it looks very corporate-draped. Hey, somebody has to pay for the free bells and whistles. I’ll make a prediction that the zip line, part of the CBS Sports stage/compound, will be the most popular attraction.

Wait, who am I kidding? The most popular stop in Super Bowl City will obviously be the Bud Light beer booth. Really, the whole point of Super Bowl City is to promote the brand names of the companies attached to each pavilion or tent or booth or whatever. It’s basically a larger-than-life commercial break of any NFL game. To some, this is a travesty. To me, it’s just the NFL following through on its two mottos: One, anything worth doing is worth overdoing. And two, any idea that makes more money off the Super Bowl is a good idea.

To be honest, after covering 32 Super Bowls, these big fan festivals (even with rad zip lines) are not something that gets my adrenaline pumping. But if you are a big NFL fan, you will definitely enjoy Super Bowl City. My one tip would be to visit Super Bowl City sometime before Wednesday or Thursday, when out-of-town fans will start to arrive in large numbers. On the other hand, if you just want a taste of the Super Bowl hype and hoopla and don’t want to fight the traffic, there’s enough stuff going on in Santa Clara and San Jose that’s also free.

GRIDLOCK! GRIDLOCK! GRIDLOCK! We’ve all heard the reports by now about the traffic nightmare in San Francisco this week and how bad it’ll be through Super Bowl game day. Is it just me? Or do San Franciscans seem a little too whiny about their traffic issues? They brag about the beauty of their city and encourage tourists to come and support their economy (the tourism/leisure/hospitality industry is the city’s third-leading employer and accounts for one out of every seven jobs in town). But then the same San Francisco residents gripe when the tourists actually show up and make the streets too crowded.

Funny thing is, for all the gripes about San Francisco and South Bay traffic, I have heard no one talk about SB50 weekend’s biggest potential transportation meltdown — which could be in Oakland on Saturday, one day before kickoff at Levi’s. That afternoon, the Oakland Coliseum complex will simultaneously be hosting a large outdoor music event and a Warriors home game. At best, we’ll have transit tension. At worst, it could be a total nervous breakdown. At 1 p.m., the O.co Coliseum will open its gates for the “Super City 50 Urban EDM Festival.” The initials stand for Electronic Dance Music, with famous international deejays and lighting effects. The EDM Festival is expected to stretch well into the evening and draw tens of thousands, many of them showing up later in the day because the headliners come on late with the best light shows. Meanwhile, at 6 p.m., just a few hundred feet across the O.co walkway, the Warriors will tip off against the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Many charitable functions connect themselves to the Super Bowl. I can hardly list them all, but I did want to mention an event I found particularly worthy — a party in San Jose sponsored by the NFL Alumni/Northern California chapter. It will feature music, a fashion show and celebrities. Funds raised will go to Alzheimer’s research and treatment, a cause after my own heart. Like many people, my immediate family has been affected by the disease. The “Rock And Roll Bowl” party is set for Wednesday night at the Rockbar Theater. Further information can be found at www.nflalumninoca.org.