“a new and brilliant understanding of San Francisco”
“If you love San Francisco, urban history, baseball and/or punk rock, this is an essential read.”
“(Mitchell) has perfectly captured that dark uncertain moment when San Francisco was seen in black and white, between the psychedelic era of hippies and the city’s reemergence as a diverse cultural Mecca.”
“Mitchell has woven a tale of politics, murder, cults, punk rock and baseball together to provide an entertaining, powerful, cohesive and holistic picture of San Francisco during the year that changed everything in our city.”
“rigorously researched, analytically sharp and accessible”
“Mitchell’s book not only examines these events as moments that ultimately changed San Francisco’s fate but also provides somewhat of a corrective on the often misconstrued, or altogether ignored, narratives of the city’s identity.”
“Mitchell did a killer job with research getting details from Jello Biafra, East Bay Ray, Dave Dictor, Penelope Houston, Ginger Coyote, Joe Dirt, Jack Boulware, Hank Rank, and many others…All in all it is a very interesting book. Well worth purchasing for not only punk rock fans but also for people interested in the history of San Francisco.”
““(E)ssential reading for newcomers and old-timers alike…To understand today’s San Francisco, one needs to recognize the long shadow cast by 1978. And it’s Mitchell who serves as the ideal person to tell that tragically rich and heart-breaking tale.”
“Mitchell writes with clarity, effortlessly switching between the main parts of the narrative while simultaneously bringing in other peripheral observations and facts. I am sure San Franciscans will revel in this, while those who have never ventured to the city should find the events of 1978 captivating. ”
San Francisco Year Zero: Political Upheaval, Punk Rock and a Third Place Baseball Team is my sixth book and will be published by Rutgers University Press in fall of 2019. It is the story of San Francisco in 1978 as well as an exploration of how the San Francisco of today, a city of deep contradictions, came into being. San Francisco is now one of the most socially liberal cities in America, but it also has some of the nation’s worst income inequality. It is a playground for tech millionaires, with an outrageously high cost of living, yet it also supports vibrant alternative and avant-garde scenes. So how did the city get this way?
In San Francisco Year Zero, I, trace the roots of the current situation back to 1978, when three key events occurred: the assassination of George Moscone and Harvey Milk occurring fewer than two weeks after the massacre of Peoples Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana, the explosion of the city’s punk rock scene, and a breakthrough season for the San Francisco Giants. Through these three strands, I explore the rifts between the city’s pro-business and progressive-left politicians, the emergence of Dianne Feinstein as a political powerhouse, the increasing prominence of the city’s LGBT community, punk’s reinvigoration of the Bay Area’s radical cultural politics, and the ways that the Giants helped unify one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse cities in the nation.
Written from my perspective as a scholar, but also a native San Franciscan who remembers that year well, San Francisco Year Zero seeks to weave together the personal and the political, putting a human face on the social upheavals that transformed a city.
Reviews
"Lincoln Mitchell presents a new and brilliant understanding of San Francisco, America's most progressive city, by describing and interpreting its culture through the extraordinary prism of politics, baseball, and the punk rock scene in the seventies. The reader learns how and why San Francisco, frequently chided derisively by President Trump and other right wing politicians for our ‘San Francisco values,’ developed those values that eventually become an indelible part of American values everywhere.”
-Art Agnos, Mayor of San Francisco, 1988-1991
“San Francisco Year Zero makes a welcome contribution to the urban history of this left-coast city and will be an engaging read for those interested in the city’s political, musical, and baseball past."
-David Amaral, Journal of Urban Affairs
“1978 was a year that shook and reshaped San Francisco just as brutally and profoundly as 1906 had, though the changes it wrought were due to cultural, social and political upheaval instead of shifting tectonic plates. In San Francisco Year Zero, Lincoln Mitchell paints a cinematic and insightful portrait of a year in which such disparate characters as Harvey Milk, Jim Jones, Johnny Rotten, Jello Biafra, Jerry Garcia, Bill Graham, Dianne Feinstein, Penelope Houston, Vida Blue and Jack Clark all left lasting marks on The City By The Bay. If you love San Francisco, urban history, baseball and/or punk rock, this is an essential read.”
-Dan Epstein, author of Big Hair and Plastic Grass: Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s
“San Francisco Year Zero parses the year 1978--the annus horribilis and nadir of San Francisco's ‘time of troubles.’ Mitchell’s brilliant political analysis has, as a counterpoint, an analysis of the 1978 Giants season. This creative mixture makes San Francisco Year Zero an extraordinarily important contribution to the historiography of San Francisco.”
-Charles A. Fracchia Sr., Founder and President Emeritus, San Francisco Historical Society
“Mitchell's comprehensive portrayal of the zeitgeist of 1978 San Francisco is illuminated by a prism sided by the unlikely trio of baseball, punk, and our city’s political traumas. His writing manifests the passion of a participant with the certainty of a historian. He has perfectly captured that dark uncertain moment when San Francisco was seen in black and white, between the psychedelic era of hippies and the city's reemergence as a diverse cultural Mecca.”
-Penelope Houston, singer and songwriter, the Avengers
"The 1978 Giants were a truly special, exciting and fun team. Mitchell does a wonderful job telling the story of that team, but what makes this book truly compelling is that he shows why baseball and the Giants were so important to the extraordinary period in San Francisco that 1978 was. By doing that, Mitchell provides an indispensable perspective and resource not only for baseball fans, but for anybody who wants to understand how San Francisco got to be the city it is today. Mitchell has woven a tale of politics, murder, cults, punk rock and baseball together to provide an entertaining, powerful, cohesive and holistic picture of San Francisco during the year that changed everything in our city."
-Bob Lurie, Owner, San Francisco Giants, 1976-1992
“From the perspective of an adolescent growing up in post-hippie San Francisco, Lincoln Mitchell brings a totally new and riveting perspective to every facet of San Francisco in 1978 from Major League Baseball, to the early days of punk rock to the tragic, tumultuous and violent politics. San Francisco Year Zero sheds new light on how the events of that pivotal year shaped politics in San Francisco and the rest of our country for the next four decades and to this day. And it’s a gentle reminder that it’s still not too late for us to once again chart the progressive political course that was cut short by the political assassinations and messianic violence that rocked San Francisco and America 40 years ago.”
-San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin
“San Francisco in Year Zero is a book that has special meaning for me. I'm a political scientist who has studied, taught, and written about urban politics for over fifty years. I'm a New York Jew who grew up in a Giants-loving home and saw Willie Mays in his rookie season at the Polo Grounds. In 1977, I became New York's first openly gay elected official. Fortunately, Lincoln Mitchell's wonderful book will appeal to a wide audience even if I like to think of it as being written with me in mind.
First, the book is really good, serious, political science. Urban politics, while a standard course in college curricula, has a paucity of new books. San Francisco Year Zero is readable, engrossing, and serious scholarship. I would adopt it for my urban politics course and I will recommend it to my colleagues who teach it.
Harvey Milk's New York Jewish heritage informed his San Francisco activism, a point that is generally ignored but which will make the book of particular interest to people in cultural studies and to people interested in religion and politics.
Through the exciting baseball story that Mitchell weaves throughout the book, Mitchell offers a close look at a significant year in Giants history, but also shows us how baseball is frequently central to our lives, and the lives of great American cities, even in very tumultuous times. This story is further strengthened because of how Mitchell links the tale of the Giants back to the larger story of life and politics in San Francisco.
Punk rock, Jonestown, the assassinations of a radical and groundbreaking mayor and a civil rights hero, and a baseball team that thrilled the city for a summer are all part of the San Francisco Mitchell portrays in this rigorously researched, analytically sharp and accessible book.
The book is both rigorous political science, that would be very useful to scholars of urban politics generally and San Francisco more specifically, but is also a highly readable and fun book that gives a deeper perspective into San Francisco in 1978. Mitchell captures both the larger political issues that defined the city then and continue to impact it now as well as the feel of what it meant to be growing up in San Francisco at the time.”
-Ken Sherrill, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Hunter College, CUNY
“While the Giants’ exciting season saved the team from a potential move to another city, there was simultaneously the rise of a punk scene that, unlike the rest of the country’s punk movement, was uniquely political — such as campaigning for gay rights — during what was a politically fast-changing moment in San Francisco. At the start of the year, Harvey Milk was sworn in among a newly diverse class of city supervisors, serving under a radically progressive mayor, George Moscone.
Of course, 1978 was also characterized by death: first, the mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, of the members of the formerly San Francisco-based Peoples Temple, orchestrated by its cult leader Jim Jones, followed almost immediately by the assassinations of Moscone and Milk by former Supervisor Dan White. Mitchell’s book not only examines these events as moments that ultimately changed San Francisco’s fate but also provides somewhat of a corrective on the often misconstrued, or altogether ignored, narratives of the city’s identity.”
-Brandon Yu, San Francisco Chronicle
“Mitchell did a killer job with research getting details from Jello Biafra, East Bay Ray, Dave Dictor, Penelope Houston, Ginger Coyote, Joe Dirt, Jack Boulware, Hank Rank, and many others…All in all it is a very interesting book. Well worth purchasing for not only punk rock fans but also for people interested in the history of San Francisco.”
-Ginger Coyote, Punk Globe
“(E)ssential reading for newcomers and old-timers alike…To understand today’s San Francisco, one needs to recognize the long shadow cast by 1978. And it’s Mitchell who serves as the ideal person to tell that tragically rich and heart-breaking tale.”
-Gary Rivlin, The Frisc
“Lincoln A. Mitchell writes fluidly and skillfully about his old home with wistful nostalgia. A reconciliation of the good times with the worst times are difficult but nevertheless compelling.”
-Philip Zozzaro, San Francisco Book Review
“Mitchell gets a perfect balance between the optimism that existed at the start of the year, juxtaposed against the omnipotent darkness the city found itself in in November. He also manages to balance the aging Hippies and the young Punks along with the progressive vision of Moscone that was so cruelly snuffed out and the more moderate politics of his successor, Dianne Feinstein. He is acutely aware of the city’s history, its multiculturalism, its suburbs and its nature - and it’s this innate knowledge that lays the foundation for the whole book…as a whole it is an informative and, in parts revelatory telling of one of the great cities of the world. Mitchell writes with clarity, effortlessly switching between the main parts of the narrative while simultaneously bringing in other peripheral observations and facts. I am sure San Franciscans will revel in this, while those who have never ventured to the city should find the events of 1978 captivating.”
“1978 created today’s San Francisco, for good and ill, and Mitchell tells the story of a city he loves in vivid detail and a keen sense of narrative. San Francisco has long been an easy city to stereotype – San Francisco Year Zero urges readers to embrace the complications hidden just out of sight below the city’s foggy surface.”
-Stephen Hausmann, New Books Network
“Mitchell’s expertise on baseball and his experience as a political science teacher come together to reflect and expand upon threads of history that are usually overlooked. Mitchell’s new book largely focuses on the year 1978, which he frames as the real start of San Francisco; this is also the time Mitchell grew up in. His experience builds a new perspective for readers of the book to learn about local influences on the culture of San Francisco.”
-Victoria Ivie, PCC Courrier
“This freewheeling narrative captures the chaos of 1978 well, with a decade’s worth of highs and lows packed into one memorable calendar year…San Francisco Year Zero is still a rollicking look at a very unique year in a very unique city.“
-Ho LIn, Foreword Review
“Mitchell does a great job showing how the San Francisco of 1978 became the San Francisco of today, but he also paints a picture of a city that is far more complex than a non-resident would realize. He intertwines both his own experiences as a kid in San Francisco who managed to have a foot in a variety of the groups that made up the city with his insight into the impact 1978 had on San Francisco politics in the decades since.“
-Tamar Chalker, Start Spreading the News
Events
Media
Interview on the Jeff Santos Show about San Francisco Year Zero, July 29, 2020-begins at minute 26:45
Interview on the Jeff Santos Show, June 19, 2020, begins at minute 28.
“7 Questions )n San Francisco, Social Movements, And Politics With Author Lincoln Mitchell,” The Campaign Workshop Blog, June 10, 2020.
“SSTN Interviews Author Lincoln Mitchell,” Start Spreading the News, May 31, 2020.
“Lincoln Mitchell on San Francisco in 1978,” Storied SF interview, Part II, February 13, 2020.
“Lincoln Mitchell on His Love of Baseball and Politics,” Storied SF interview, Part I, February 11, 2020.
“How San Francisco became San Francisco with Lincoln Mitchell,” The Chip Franklin Show, KGO, January 28, 2020.
“1978: the year that changed San Francisco forever,” The Guardian, January 5, 2019.
Discussion of San Francisco Year Zero on “The Infinite Inning” with Steven Goldman, January 3, 2019. Segment begins at minute 47.
Discussion of San Francisco Year Zero on “Drinks with Tony,” December 25, 2019.
“San Francisco 1978: Murder/Gay Rights/Jonetown/Baseball/No-end Trump,” Bar Crawl Radio, December 13, 2019.
“1978 shaped San Francisco into a modern city,” Madeleine Brand, “Press Play,” KCRW, December 5, 2019
“San Francisco Year One,” Baseball by the Book podcast, December 3, 2019.
“‘San Francisco Year Zero’ with Lincoln Mitchell,” Bergino Baseball Clubhouse Roundtable with Jennifer Blowdryer and Ken Sherrill, December 2, 2019.
Podcast on “San Francisco Year Zero: Political Upheaval Punk Rock and a Third Place Baseball Team” with the New Books Network, November 21, 2019.
Interview with Rick Tittle on San Francisco Year Zero: Political Upheaval Punk Rock and a Third-Place Baseball Team, Sports Byline, October 30, 2019.
“‘Year Zero’ uses baseball, politics to explain how 1978 forever changed SF,” Brandon Yu, San Francisco Chronicle, October 27, 2019
“Lincoln Mitchell connects the dots of the last 41 years of San Francisco,” California Sun Podcast, October 22, 2019
“Lincoln A. Mitchell’s ‘San Francisco Year Zero: Political Upheaval Punk Rock and a Third-Place Baseball Team,” The Page 99 Test, October 14, 2019
“Lincoln Mitchell & Isis,” Coffee with a Canine, October 10, 2019 (Isis is a dog)
Buy the Book
San Francisco Year Zero can be purchased at several brick and mortar bookstores, so please check to see if your local independent bookseller has the book in stock. If they don’t they will probably order a few copies if you ask them nicely. If you prefer to buy San Francisco Year Zero online, you can find it at most places books are sold online including Green Apple Books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Rutgers University Press. The book is available in hardback or electronic form. Regardless of where you buy the book, please be sure to rate and review it wherever you can.
Links
The 1978 Giants Baseball Reference Page
Charles A. Fracchia. Jr,’s San Francisco Giants 1979 Media Guide Quest
The Avengers opening for the Sex Pistols at Winterland, January 14, 1978
Sex Pistols at Winterland, January 14, 1978
Grateful Dead Concert New Years Eve 1977, Set 2
Grateful Dead Concert New Years Eve 1978
Harvey Milk Press Event Regarding Pooper Scooper Law
Dianne Feinstein Announces Assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk
Contact
If you would like to be in touch about San Francisco Year Zero, please email me at lincoln@lincolnmitchell.com. I am available for media appearances, podcasts, book events, lectures, discussions and other fora as well.