Recently, the city of San Francisco closed down the chess games on historic Market Street [pictured]. Blogger Chris Torres of Chess Musingshas written this open letter to mayor Gavin Newsom.
"Amberley excelled at chess - one mark, Watson, of a scheming mind." - Sherlock Holmes
"I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position." - Marcel Duchamp
"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov