Hundreds of homeless advocates seeking to set up a protest tent city alongside Super Bowl City on Wednesday afternoon in downtown San Francisco quickly found themselves surrounded by several hundred police officers in riot gear.

It could have passed for a prevent defense, except the football game wasn’t for another four days.

The advocates, vowing to call attention to the plight of the neediest during an event often catering to the wealthiest, brought with them five nylon camping tents. But the green and gray plastic domes never made it onto solid ground.

Instead, the hundreds of cops and protesters faced each other in a tense standoff beneath the giant “50” atop the Ferry Building.

There were no arrests but there was also no camping. Protesters were told their tents would be confiscated if they put them on the ground and tried to crawl inside. So they held the tents aloft, like giant protest signs.

“Eliminate Poverty, Not the Poor,” read a sign on one of the non-camping tents.

“I’m surprised, shocked, dismayed and depressed,” said “Tiny,” the editor of a magazine for the homeless and the poor. “They told us that if we put our tents down, they will arrest us.”

A few feet away, a protester pointed a bullhorn into the faces of police officers arrayed before him, saying, “I am angry! This is what fascism looks like!”

The cops waited impassively.

City ordinances forbid camping on sidewalks, a rule that is often overlooked in other parts of town. But it was not being overlooked on Wednesday in the heart of the area set aside for hoopla and TV cameras.

Among the crowd was Vicki Gray, a counselor with the San Francisco Night Ministry.

“This Super Bowl City is a moral disaster area,” she said. “Homeless people are human beings who deserve to have adequate social services and health services. We want affordable housing now.”

As the protesters loudly chanted slogans, streams of workers headed home on the Embarcadero sidewalk or by ferry looked on bemusedly.

Gina Lauricella, 30, slowly trudged through the crowd on her way home from work. The mood among all the passersby was calm, and Lauricella even cracked a small smile as she watched the protest and listened to the voices on the loudspeakers.

“I think they have a valid idea — I’m all for it,” she said, of the protest. “It’s no disruption at all.’’

Bonnie Walton shuffled off the ferry from Oakland and was frustrated that she could not park her bike anywhere, because police barricades had blocked her usual spots.

“Yeah, it’s a little irritating, but this is a gaggle and Super Bowl City is a gaggle. It’s all crowded.”

The army of reporters and photographers from across the U.S. covering the standoff at times appeared to rival the size of the protest group.

Among the speakers was former state Assemblyman and city Supervisor Tom Ammiano, who yelled into a microphone, “You’re treating the homeless like lepers!”

Supervisor David Campos joined the lineup of speakers, telling the crowd, “We cannot turn our backs on families struggling to feed their kids. We actually have to have a government that serves people, not the corporations.”

As the protest wore on, the crowd seemed to contain more homeless advocates than actual homeless. Some street people on hand were appreciative; others were too busy finding a place to sleep for the night to stop and participate.

Cynthia Lee, 61, said she was happy to spend time with people yelling on her behalf before she punched in for her bed at one of the city’s shelters.

“I think if San Francisco has money to throw at the Super Bowl — even if it brings in tax money — they should give us places to live,” she said.

A few feet away, Tony Turney, 59, calmly pushed his clothing-laden bicycle by the gaggle, searching for a place along the waterfront to throw down his sleeping bag.

“This is nice, but I do my protest in other ways,” he said. “We really don’t want to bother anybody.”

As the protest began, organizers and police met to set the parameters. The directive to keep the tents off the ground came as a surprise to homeless advocates, but they complied and cool heads prevailed.

“We’re here to help facilitate First Amendment rights,” said San Francisco Police Sgt. Mike Andraychak. He pointed out that police usually do not allow encampments to spring up at the base of Market Street, regardless of the presence of protesters or a Super Bowl. Many years ago, large numbers of tents were often seen near Embarcadero Plaza but none have been seen recently.

Paul Boden, an organizer with Western Regional Advocacy Project, shrugged about the orders from police not to plant their tents. A longtime fiery activist, he has seen it all.

“We are adjustable. but it doesn’t mean we like,” he said.

Shortly before 7 p.m., the protesters began marching north along the Embarcadero, intending to proceed in a circle around Super Bowl City. Inside the compound, the glitzy party blared on with loud rock music filling the air, happy sports fans chowing down gourmet food and a giant TV screen beaming film clips of great Super Bowls of the past. No one, it seemed, was aware a protest was going on outside the fence line.

“This is fun in here, I don’t know anything about a protest,” said Lisa Garcia of Marin County, as she happily perused wines at the Sonona County exhibit tent. She said she agreed with the idea of the protest — “there shouldn’t be people who have to live in the street,” she said — but she wasn’t about to leave the festivities to join them.

Meanwhile across town, San Francisco authorities were putting the finishing touches on a different encampment of their own making —the huge Pier 80 winter shelter.

City officials on Wednesday led a tour of the nearly finished shelter and said they hope to open it Thursday. It is in the former Oracle warehouse for the America’s Cup race, and it can hold 150 people.

Homeless people will be able to move into the shelter with all their belongings, pets and partners, and can stay around the clock until the end of March. Case managers will be on hand to help them with permanent housing or counseling.

The convergence of the official shelter with the protest tent shelter spotlighted the debate that has built for weeks over how the city’s chronic homeless problem should be handled as Super Bowl 50 and all its high-rolling spectacle comes to the Bay Area.

On one side are homeless advocates who say police and street cleaners are shoving the homeless out of view so the tourists won’t see them. On the other side are city officials who say the only moving they’ve been doing of the homeless is into winter shelters to get out of pounding El Niño rains.

“Our only goal is to help people in out of the rain, and it has nothing to do with the Super Bowl,” said Trent Rhorer, head of the Human Services Agency, which is organizing the shelter.

Kevin Fagan and Steve Rubenstein are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. E-mail: kfagan@sfchronicle.com, srubenstein@sfchronicle.com