![\"\"](\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-9.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-5.jpeg\" "\\"Article")
David Talbot knows San Francisco needs a morale boost to escape the \u201cdoom loop\u201d headlines<\/a> and conservative media schadenfreude<\/a> over the city\u2019s current malaise. And the author, former journalist and San Francisco historian<\/a> is looking to a 49ers win in Sunday\u2019s Super Bowl against the Kansas City Chiefs as the best vehicle to bring it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI love San Francisco. I\u2019ve lived here most of my life, and I think the city really is lost,\u201d Talbot told SFGATE in a phone interview last week. \u201cWe need the Niners. \u2026 I can\u2019t think of any other institution that represents all of the city at this point that pulls us together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Talbot\u2019s belief in the football team and the lift it could bring comes from experience rather than just starry-eyed optimism. In his 2012 book \u201cSeason of the Witch<\/a>,\u201d which grippingly covers the history of San Francisco from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, the 72-year-old Talbot writes that the 49ers played a city-saving role in 1982 when the team\u00a0beat the Cincinnati Bengals<\/a>\u00a0in its first Super Bowl appearance. At that time San Francisco was mired in trauma, but of a vastly different kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the 1980s opened, San Francisco was reeling from a tumultuous two decades that brought radical change, profound hope and unmitigated terror to its population. As Talbot writes in his book, events like the Summer of Love<\/a> and anti-war movement, the birth of the gay rights movement in the Castro, the Symbionese Liberation Army and Jonestown plunged San Francisco into a war with itself. Newly arrived residents embracing tolerance and eager to push cultural and political boundaries clashed with more conservative native-born residents resistant to liberal change, Talbot writes. That war culminated tragically with the 1978 assassinations of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone<\/a> by Dan White.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere was the emerging city, the gay city, the city of San Francisco values,\u201d Talbot said in his interview. \u201cAnd there\u2019s the traditional city represented most violently by Dan White. The two had clashed with disastrous results.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That whiplashing cycle of events left the city dazed and delirious. And in the last section of the book, titled \u201cDeliverance,\u201d he describes how he thinks the 49ers helped San Francisco slowly regain its spirit as the decade turned. Edward DeBartolo Jr., whose family bought the team in 1977, and Bill Walsh, who became coach in 1979, transformed a scrappy team considered \u201cthe worst in the NFL\u201d into a promising group with\u00a0Ted Lasso-like potential<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWounded by one civic trauma after the next \u2014 San Francisco was not quite ready to give itself over to 49ers fever,\u201d Talbot wrote in the book. \u201cBut the numbness from all those years of grisly headlines slowly began to lift from the city.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three years later as the team\u2019s fortunes built into an underdog winning season, it faced the Dallas Cowboys in the NFC playoff game. Known as \u201cAmerica\u2019s Team\u201d at the time, the Cowboys, Talbot writes, were a conservative, militaristic team confident it would vanquish the godless \u201cSin Funcisco.\u201d But before a packed Candlestick Park, the 49ers won 28-27 with an extraordinary touchdown that\u2019s now simply known as \u201cThe Catch<\/a>.\u201d And when they clinched the Super Bowl win in Detroit on Jan. 24, San Francisco was ecstatic<\/a>. (The San Francisco Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though Talbot had moved to San Francisco only the year before, he eagerly attended the victory parade<\/a>. When talking with SFGATE, he described that day as a unifying experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe victory parade called out all sorts of people, all kinds of people, the entire city. Blue collar, white collar, Black, white, Asian, everybody was lined up along the parade route,\u201d he said. \u201cThe team saved the city\u2019s soul and healed the city at the right time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Four decades later, Talbot speculates that San Francisco is no longer at war with itself, but it suffers from a new and more intractable problem: It doesn\u2019t know what is. As he puts it, factors like the tech invasion<\/a>, homelessness<\/a> and the pandemic<\/a> have knocked the city off kilter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat is San Francisco? Is it boarded up?\u201d he said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t work anymore. The city is kind of lost.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Talbot takes the sense of loss personally. He and his wife raised two sons here \u2014 his son Joe Talbot<\/a> wrote and directed the 2019 film \u201cThe Last Black Man in San Francisco<\/a>\u201d \u2014 and he\u2019s not about to leave despite San Francisco\u2019s challenges. And nothing has shaken his love for the Niners or his confidence in the team\u2019s power to unify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI love the team,\u201d he said. \u201cMy sons, my wife and I were glued to the TV all season long.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Talbot also drew parallels between the 49ers of today and the team of 1981, saying both are eccentric and reflect San Francisco itself, even now that it plays its games 45 miles away in Santa Clara at\u00a0Levi\u2019s Stadium<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Talbot said he sees shades of famed quarterback Joe Montana in current quarterback Brock Purdy, whom Talbot calls \u201cthe real deal.\u201d Though Montana looked more like \u201ca regular guy\u201d than an imposing athlete, he was just what the 1981 team needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe team was weird and poetic under Bill Walsh. It reflected the city,\u201d he said. \u201cI think the team today under [tight end George] Kittle and Purdy is also a magical group of men of athletes that in some ways reflects the city, too. It\u2019s different, it\u2019s unique.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Along with the Super Bowl win, Talbot in his book also credits the mayorship of Dianne Feinstein with getting San Francisco back on track. He said\u00a0she knew the team<\/a>\u00a0and believed in it. As he writes in the book, her support of the 49ers went so far as to inviting DeBartolo and Walsh to dinner days before the game with the Cowboys, telling them, \u201cI don\u2019t know if you realize it, but San Francisco needs this team.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He\u2019s not as confident, though, that Mayor London Breed shares the late Feinstein\u2019s enthusiasm. Talbot said he doesn\u2019t believe Breed knows the team, and he doesn\u2019t believe she\u2019s \u201cwith\u201d it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShe doesn\u2019t seem like someone who goes to games, hangs out with the players and knows how to talk to them,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine her having any kind of persuasiveness, or, you know, believability with the team and saying, \u2018We need you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an emailed statement to SFGATE, Parisa Safarzadeh, a spokeswoman for Breed, said the mayor is lifelong San Franciscan and 49ers fan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Mayor, like fans across the Bay Area and the country, are very excited for the game on Sunday and hopeful for a 49er victory over the Chiefs,\u201d Safarzadeh said. \u201cSan Francisco continues to make significant strides in our economic recovery and is doing well, and a Super Bowl win would help build on the momentum and excitement we\u2019re already seeing in the City.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the 49ers take the field Sunday in Las Vegas, Talbot will be watching from his Bernal Heights home. Like in 1981, he knows the 49ers are facing a country that likes to kick San Francisco when it\u2019s down and ridicule it \u201cas the city of gays, the city of homeless people, that beautiful city that doesn\u2019t work.\u201d He wants a championship for everyone, not just his sons, who are tired of hearing his stories of the Niners\u2019 fading 1980s glory, but also the city and every 49ers fan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI would love to bring home a championship for all people,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause I do think [the team] unifies and excites the city like nothing else can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Feb 8, 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n By Kent German<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Kent German is a News Editor at SFGATE. A California native, he’s a USF graduate and a veteran of CNET where he wrote the review of the first iPhone. He’s also a dog person and a proud aviation geek with a healthy knowledge of airport codes. Email him at kent.german@sfgate.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" David Talbot knows San Francisco needs a morale boost, and he’s looking to a Super Bowl victory Sunday as the best vehicle to bring it By\u00a0Kent German Feb 8, 2024 (SFGate.com) David Talbot knows San Francisco needs a morale boost to escape the \u201cdoom loop\u201d headlines and conservative media schadenfreude over the city\u2019s current… Continue reading A city at war with itself<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-10.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-7.jpeg\" "\\"Article")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-11.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-6.jpeg\" "\\"Article")
A city that doesn\u2019t work<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-12.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-8.jpeg\" "\\"Article")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-13.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-9.jpeg\" "\\"Article")