As a delegate to many trade shows at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, the name of the venue has always intrigued me… but obviously not to the point that I could be bothered to search online.

Thanks to David Talbot’s uber-wonderful Season Of The Witch, I now know him to be the Major of San Francisco who was assassinated a few minutes before Harvey Milk.

The book itself covers the Dark Ages of San Francisco from the time Summer of Love had turned to the Autumn of Homelessness and the Winter of Smack in 1967 to the relative redemption of the San Francisco 49s winning the Super Bowl in 1982.

From the Zodiac killings to the onset of AIDS, from Jim Jones’ malign political influence (which ended in mass enforced suicide in Guyana) to the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, this book has it all. Once upon a time, before Silicon Valley, there was a mess called San Francisco and this is its story during those turbulent 15 years.