San Francisco is a much more complicated city than its reputation among those who have never lived there as a lefty, libertine, and dirty place. Yes, in national elections, the city will reliably vote for Democrats, though local elections are nonpartisan. And yes, there is a big homeless problem and a big gap between the incomes of the homeless and new arrivals who can afford the high cost of San Francisco housing. To read some press accounts, the city would appear to be in an absolute mess and unliveable. Of course, that does not explain the expensive real estate. The city has incredible beauty, mostly due to its location and by some of its man-made creations, such as the Golden Gate Bridge.
One corrective to the stereotypes of San Francisco is the 2012 book, Season of the Witch, by David Talbot. It is a fascinating book, a real page-turner about some disturbing city history, but a flawed book with respect to its central premise.
The book focuses on the late 1960s to the early 1980s, with brief excursions back to the 1930s and forward to the 2000s. Each chapter is deeply researched, and Talbot was able to interview many key figures for the story he tells, including Dianne Feinstein, Willie Brown, and Armistead Maupin, and relatives of key figures who have died.
While all the chapters are interesting, the most fascinating concern Jim Jones, the preacher whose ministry ended in tragedy in Guyana, where he led members of his church to their death by having them “drink the Kool-Aid” after the killing of visiting U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan by church members. I did not know until reading this book the extent Jim Jones had insinuated himself into the city’s government or the influence he had. For example, Talbot claims that in the 1975 race for mayor, George Moscone benefitted from voter fraud engineered by Jones in what was a very close election, though Talbot does not claim that Moscone knew about the fraud. Talbot further details Jones’ influence with other major politicians, including Harvey Milk and Willie Brown. Also, Talbot reports that a member of Jones’ Peoples Temple was able to obtain a senior job in the District Attorney’s office and thwart investigations of Jones’s church.
This is all interesting, as are other chapters such as the one on the Zebra killings, the kidnaping of Patty Hearst, the murders of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, among others. Talbot even manages to make his account of a 1982 football game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Dallas Cowboys engaging to this reader, who is not a football fan.
The football episode, though, highlights what is wrong with this book. Each chapter would make an excellent magazine article, but the structure of the book – enchantment, followed by terror and then deliverance – is unconvincing. For example, in the deliverance phase, Talbot wants to make a football game the catalyst for a renaissance of San Francisco after the terrible 1970s. This is a stretch. He then goes on to make the AIDS epidemic, which hit San Francisco hard, as part of the deliverance because people worked hard for the people who fell to the disease. This doesn’t work. One could easily make AIDS, which spread among the gay community at an alarming rate, part of the terror.
Also, in his recounting of terrible days in San Francisco, Talbot seems fixated on Irish and Italian Catholics. In his telling, the former dominated the police force and the latter were heavily represented among politicians. Neither group comes out well in the book. The Irish and Italian Catholic communities are mostly referenced by key Catholic actors in the history the book recounts who knew each other and attended the same Caholic schools, but this will leave some readers with an unfair impression of the general Catholic community.
Moreover, the fixation on Catholics glides over the reality that San Francisco is not just composed of Catholics. The large Chinese community is given a mention, but no real analysis. For example, there is no discussion of the school busing controversy of the 1970s in San Francisco, where it was the Chinese community, not the white population, which was the most fervently opposed to busing. Also, the Jewish community is largely absent. While Harvey Milk and Dianne Feinstein are Jewish, there is no mention of the prominent role Jews have played in San Francisco, for example in the establishment of businesses and, especially, in philanthropy which has benefitted the city. Other groups, such as the Russians in the Richmond district are not mentioned at all nor is the large Hispanic community much discussed. The African-American community, which probably represented about ten percent of the population during the period covered by the book, is discussed, but mostly in terms of their participation in some of the terrible events recounted. There is no discussion about what life was like in areas such as Hunters Point.
In other words, this is a selective history with no real effort made to link the undeniably terrible events and practices of prominent people to the lives of most city residents. Then, near the end of the book, Talbot turns to the general population and implies that they are mostly rabid football fans whose lives were transformed when the 49ers vastly improved their game.
This may seem unfair criticism, since the author has not written a sociological study of San Francisco. But then his theme does not work. To what extent did the city suffer in the 1970s because of the events he recounts and did it really rebound from that in the 80s? The 1970s of course were not a pleasant time; the economy’s stagflation, the Vietnam war, Watergate, and other developments made sure of that, but this is not just a San Francisco story.
At the end of the book, Talbot says that San Francisco ended up a more enlightened city. He implies that San Francisco was an intolerant place before, but that is not really true. Sure, the police may have behaved badly, and one can point to their hostile attitude and actions as the gay community expanded and became much more visible. I would argue, though, that the influx of gays to San Francisco was not just because of the attraction of a beautiful city but due to a reputation the city had for tolerance. Of course, there were people made queasy by the changes along Castro Street; indeed, I knew people then who expressed their discomfort to me with what was happening. But the relative tolerance of the city was well-known. People now are less queasy about gays, but that is something that has occurred in general in most of the United States at a surprisingly rapid rate, which likely has something to do with different generational attitudes.
San Francisco is still complicated. While the portrait of the city as a leftist haven was always exaggerated and ignored some of the conservatism prevalent among business interests and some of the population, nimbyism, which is conservative in nature, is currently common in San Francisco. For example, at the corner of Haight and Stanyan across from the eastern end of Golden Gate Park, there used to be a troubled McDonald’s in which reportedly drug dealing and perhaps other crimes were occurring. The McDonald’s has closed, and the city acquired the building, which has now been torn down, along with its large parking lot. About a year ago, the city decided that it would operate a tent city for the homeless on this lot. There was a furious reaction from some of the people and businesses in the area, though it was not universal. The city went ahead, and it has worked. The tents are off the sidewalks, and the people down on their luck in the tent city, which is shielded from the street, have access to food, toilets and washing facilities. The Whole Foods across the street continues to do a good business. Obviously, this is not a permanent solution, but it was good use of a vacant lot until something better can be figured out.
In line with the stereotypes of San Francisco, the school board has recently spent a great deal of effort to rename schools which had names that they did not like, including Lincoln and Feinstein. The board’s historical research was superficial and no professional historians were consulted. This all made the city look ridiculous. But contrary to the impression given by a reading of non-local news outlet accounts and commentary on this issue, many in San Francisco do not support the school board. It finally had to back down in this endeavor because of the criticism and political pressure, including from Mayor London Breed, who is African-American, and a prominent alumnus of Lincoln High School, liberal lawyer Laurence Tribe. There was even the threat of litigation and there is currently an effort to recall some of the school board members. The board may revisit the subject at a later date after life in the public schools, which had been closed during this controversy, returns to something approximating normal, but the indication is that possible future consideration will involve historians. The board will likely tread more carefully in what it has discovered is treacherous terrain.
San Francisco does not match its stereotypes nor the framework Talbot has tried to impose on some of its history. Nevertheless, the book is fascinating and well-worth reading for the history it does recount. It is well-written and pleasurable to read. Even most San Franciscans will learn something from it, but readers should ignore the arc of the book and concentrate on the episodes.
