Book Review: Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love by David Talbot

Season of the Witch is a must read for any person living in San Francisco or for those who are students of cities. Talbot doesn't delve into the early years of San Francisco's history but concentrates his attention to the tumultuous 1960's and the years following that. While his title may be accurate that a season of the witch came out of the 60's his conclusion that the AIDS epidemic, the championship of the 49ers and the mayoral leadership of  Diane Feinstein brought deliverance to San Francisco feels like he is stretching the events to fit into a plot that makes a nice story of Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance. 

Nevertheless the history in this book through the meticulous interviews that he conducted and research has brought out a historical narrative that I have only heard in bits and pieces with many pieces I have never heard before. 

Talbot starts off with a San Francisco set in the traditional conservative values of the Roman Catholic Irish dominated church and police department and the battle that liberals began to fight and the emergence of the hippie movement through the stiff resistance of the powers that were in the city. Characters such as Rev. Edward Beggs founder of Huckleberry House, Allen Ginsberg, The Hells Angels, The Diggers, Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, David Smith and the beginnings of the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, Charles Sullivan the King of Swing, Bill Graham the Napoleon of Rock, Scott Newhall and the San Francisco Chronicle, Herb Caen, The underground music movement, Hibiscus and his drag queen dance troupe are some of the characters and events in what Talbot describes as the Enchantment phase of San Francisco. Free love, free food, free music was a culture that was being created in this season of celebration.  

In Part Two, "A season of Terror," Talbot starts off with the statement, "What began in San Francisco as a celebration of life would become the opposite." Janis Joplin and the entrance of heroin, speed, LSD, hard drugs, the underground railway of runaway youths in the Haight, Vietnam vets wasted from the war, Anton Levey and the Church of Satan, Charles Manson, The Rolling Stones at Altamont, the Good Earth Commune, Mayor Alito, Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army, Donald DeFreeze alias Cinque, Art Agnos, The Zebra murders, The Zodiac killer, The Black Self help Moving Company, Muhammad's Temple no. 26 (the Fillmore auditorium), Rose Pak, Willie Brown, Ed Lee and the Housing crisis and International Hotel, The gay movement, the porn industry, Moscone, John Barbagelata, Harvey Milk, Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, the Fillmore demolition, Dan White and the Moscone/Milk assassination are among some of the events and people in this section that depict the downward spiral from a season of enchantment into the dark abyss of a season of terror. Talbot's countless interviews and intriguing writing style of recounting history in the context of how a city develops makes this book one that keeps you turning pages. At the same time the depth of human depravity and tragedy caught me often putting the book down and wanting to cry. 

In Section three which Talbot titles as Deliverance he highlights the rise of Diane Feinstein as a mother/doctor who cares for the broken soul of San Francisco, the rise of the 49ers through Coach Bill Walsh and quarterback Joe Montana. Talbot ends this section with how the AIDS epidemic brought out the best in San Francisco as people began taking care of one another. The ending at best is shallow and left me wondering just how much those events actually brought San Francisco together and just how much Talbot was stretching the flow of events to fit a story line of enchantment, terror and deliverance. It is obvious that in his pursuit to write a story that Talbot missed some key people such as Randy Shaw and minimized others like Cecil Williams who played significant roles in the shaping of present day San Francisco. 

Nevertheless this book is fascinating, detailed but not boring, grievous, R-Rated for its violence and sexuality but truthful for telling the story the way it was and I promise you a book you cannot put down. If you do put it down is will be only to catch your breath from the fast pace of events or the overwhelming sense of darkness and grief that this beloved city of San Francisco has passed through. 

Tim Svoboda
YWAM@357 Ellis street
San Francisco
October 2015

Book Review: The Infinite City. A San Francisco Atlas by Rebecca Solnit

This is one of those must read books by anyone who has an interest in the context of San Francisco. Solnit does an amazing job reading the contours and context of San Francisco. This is not a traditional atlas. This is a book that maps the past, present and future and overlays them in what is known as a palimpsest where the history of the past is interwoven with the present. Her thesis is that it is impossible to have just one map of a city. There are infinite maps depending on the lenses you use to look at your city or neighborhood. Where I live and work in the Tenderloin people often think of the word homeless for this neighborhood. But the Tenderloin has the highest density of children out of all the neighborhoods in San Francisco. It is not just homeless. It is immigrants, Arabic speaking people, there are two mosques in our neighborhood and the police station last time I checked was operating in 12 languages. There are maps written over maps and knowing a neighborhood goes way beyond knowing the streets but understanding the rivers that have passed through, as well as the present streams that move it today. 

Solnit gives us 22 maps that attempt to contrast and define the colorful and intriguing contours of San Francisco. Some of the maps are Shipyards and Sounds which traces the migration of African Americans into the Bay area for building ships and the music that was produced by such artists like the Pointer Sisters, Edwin Hawkin Singers, Sly Stone, Otis Redding and others. The map Monarchs and Queens contrasts the queer public places of San Francisco and the numerous exotic butterflies that inhabit some of the hills of San Francisco. The Right Wing of the Dove maps the conservative war machine industry of San Franciso though the city is known as a place of peace and compassion. Companies like Bechtel, Lockheed Martin and Lawrence Livermore labs are a few of those that have supplied and manufactured weapons for our overseas wars. Names before the Names maps the native American tribes that once inhabited the Bay area that made up about 17,000 people and which parts of the Bay area each tribe inhabited.

Solnit also goes away from factual history and does a fun map called Phrenological San Francisco. Phrenology, a 19th century pseudo science study of facial features was used to define peoples talents and character. She turns the map of San Francisco into a person's face and gives names for different neighborhoods that are characteristic of them. The Tenderloin is named Cautiousness while SOMA is named Love of Sex. Presidio is Sublimity and the Mission is Desire for Liquids while Noe Valley is the Love of Family. Each map is done in beautiful color and doesn't concentrate on street names like a traditional map. Beyond the maps, Rebecca Solnit provides lots of history and insights into how San Francisco developed its deep undercurrents of compassion, tolerance, ingenuity, liberalness, and other values that SF is known for around the world. Her ample writings around each of the 22 maps are filled with history and insights. 

For those of us who are studying how we as faith leaders influence and interact with the city Solnit gives us a tool that can be further expanded on. She contends that her 22 maps are just a beginning and that with 800,000 inhabitants there are an infinite number of maps waiting to be made from those of us who live and work in the city of St. Francis. Her work inspired me to complete a map that helped me understand the city through the eyes of the religious and sacred places that dot our city. With over 650 religious places of all faiths in the city San Francisco is anything but unspiritual. 

Not much these days is spoken about a "Theology of Place." San Francisco, out of any city that I have come to know is a city of neighborhoods. It is a city with no exact center or location that defines all of what it is. With over 117 neighborhoods each location has a special characteristic about it. San Francisco has attempted in some ways to be a city built without the automobile (though not very successful) in mind and therefore has created neighborhoods with mixed uses of both businesses and residential and each neighborhood trying to have its own center. With over 4000 restaurants, 1200 murals and a healthy resistance to chain stores San Francisco has developed multiple personalities so that each micro location takes on its own personality. For those of us who minister and work in our neighborhood understanding context or developing a Theology of Place is essential if we want to relate to the people around us. Rebecca Solnit does a great job in attempting to do this on a large scale for the whole city of San Francisco by studying the parts (neighborhoods) that make up the whole. 

I have only lived in San Francisco for 8 years and have been searching for tools, conversations, friendships, prayer paths, churches, people and places that would help me understand the city and have had many helpful encounters. Rebecca Solnit's book is a read I would highly recommend as we journey together in understanding this city of that is a wonderful kalidiscope of colors. 

Tim Svoboda
YWAM@357 Ellis street
September 2015

Taking Time to Listen

"How long have you lived in this neighborhood? What is it about this place that you like the most? What are you concerned about? How have things changed since the time you first moved here?" These are some of the questions this summer that some of our congregants, young and old, practiced asking folks in the neighborhood that our church has resided in for over two decades.  It has been important for us to recognize that it's possible to exist in place without really being present, especially in a neighborhood that has been undergoing as much dramatic transformation as San Francisco's Mission District.  There are many new neighbors to meet, but also those who have been here for a long time and are most affected by the changing demographics, for better or worse.  Being intentional to take time and create space for conversation with our neighbors, we seek renewal in our calling as Christ's presence here.

Ray Bakke on a "Theology as Big as the City"

A pastors gathering with Dr. Ray Bakke on May 15, 2015, Grace Fellowship Community Church, San Francisco, CA

At a lecture given among over 80 San Francisco clergy on Friday morning, May 15th, 2015, Dr. Ray Bakke shared: “Theology never happens in a vacuum. Many years ago, Ted Ward, a famous educator and friend said, ‘Ray, I think that as you get older, people will be more interested in how you learn, than what you know.’ I thought about that, and I decided that I would try something today. I would do a little reflection, on where the theology comes from and what happened in my own transformation, because I am still on that journey, and will be sharing that with you. Obviously, the theme of today, as announced, is: a Theology as Big as the City, but you should know that the words that were left out of the title by InterVarsity was MY SEARCH for a theology as big as my city...My text is Psalm 31:21, ‘Blessed be the Lord who has shown me His marvelous kindness in a strong city’ ...[which is] a gift of common grace, paid by tax money, with transit systems, health care systems, school systems, sewer systems - all gifts of common grace.  And as John Calvin would say, when he told his deacon board to supervise the hospital in Geneva to make sure they were caring for the poor, that the hospital is a public ministry, a gift of common grace.  We’ve got to come get back to this understanding - the city as a gift of common grace. We have to re-capture God’s role for the city.”  -  Hear the entire lecture >