Doomed to Fail - Ep 208: The Mayor of Castro Street - Harvey Milk

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

For our last story for Pride Month, let's talk about Harvey Milk. Harvey was only in politics for a few years but he was groundbreaking in that he was an out gay man who encouraged others to also come out and share who they are. We'll cover Harvey's early life in NY, his time in the Navy, and what ultimately led him to Castro Street in San Francisco! Source - The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life & Times of Harvey Milkhttps://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-mayor-of-castro-street-the-life-and-times-of-harvey-milk_randy-shilts/279686/? Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for them. Taylor, we are alive. How are you? I'm good. How's BFG? Oh, my God. Yeah, BFG.

Okay, sorry. Ben Franklin's ghost, he's wonderful. He's a very chill pet. I know you just mentioned that you got to have another dog at your house. tortoise is nothing like a dog he like is outside we put it outside during the day and he just finds a shady spot but he's tired because

he lived at like the zoo in like a smaller pen now he has like a pretty big yard to walk around so he gets tired and then we bring him in around like four and give him a bunch of lettuce and then he goes to sleep that's so cute he is sent you a picture oh my god we got him this tiny flower pot that's just his size

and we just like stick his head in the flower pot and put him in there and he just crawls all the way in and he sleeps for like 15 hours that's so adorable i'm jealous of the low maintenance element of your pet no i think he's gonna do great outside he likes a little burrow that we built him and yeah he's i think he's doing good and at least for now you have to bring him inside i take it yes well they said to bring him inside just because he's a he's kind of small but actually think he'd be fine back there i don't know if we'd like have to have to but we want to because what like if you don't then Maybe, like, an owl will get to him?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't think any, like, land animal could get to him because we put up, like, plastic corrugated thing that you would put on top of a patio all the way around the fence. So, like, he can't see out. Nothing can see in. And so I think that, like, a coyote's not going to jump that fence to eat him.

Yeah. I don't believe that. But I would worry about, like, a hawk. Yeah. Yeah. He's not that small. He's kind of big. I don't know.

anyway i have desert tortoise he will live here forever he's amazing it is very cool i love your desert tortoise and please keep sending me pictures as often as you'd like i will i will i will um sweet well why don't i bring up something that we were discussing that's going to be a little bit of a change to the show format going forward cool so we are going to reduce a little bit of our recording schedule and release once a week instead of twice a week and I think it's totally fair yeah I hope there's not a ton of drop off or maybe you know folks can give more feedback between episodes on what they like what they didn't like but um yeah it's summer break coming up and we want to take a little bit easy on ourselves and so that was kind of our compromise so cool so

i was we're going to do one we're actually going to record twice today but we're we're going to release one this coming week and then the next episode the following week so yeah this idea exactly and if you haven't listened to all for episodes we have like a million so go back and listen to them yeah we have a huge catalog at this point yeah um sweet so taylor are you going to go first today i think so cool okay um but first we're doomed to fail oh we bring you histories most notorious disasters and failures and i am taylor joined by far's and now i'm ready Okay. Thank you for the reminder. I am going to, for my last episode for Pride Month, talk about Harvey Milk.

Oh, nice. Yeah. I haven't, I saw the movie a long time ago. Did you? I saw it so long ago. I just know James Franco was in it and Sean Penn played him, but I don't know. And I know he was killed by another city council member, but like I don't know every, did I just ruin everything? No, everybody knows that, I think. that's like that's that's the that's the basic that was actually my next line harvey milk held the elected position of supervisor which means city council in san francisco he was the first openly gay um elected official in california and one of the first in the nation and he was assassinated by a former co-worker at city hall what year 1978 wow it took that long to have an openly gay office holder is that what you said elected office yeah oh wow yeah there's probably a ton but just weren't of course right exactly right like there's of course it's like i remember when michael sams came out as

gay in the nfl and i was like there's probably like a ton there's just no way you know and like probably statistically it's impossible statistically it's possible and many of those people also probably never told anybody they were gay anyway you know what i mean like it was just like for whatever reason or hopefully they did or whatever did you ever see did you ever watch that stupid will for a movie about Eurovision? No. It's so good. It's just like it's him and Rachel McAdams and they like

are like Icelandic people who put a song into Eurovision and at one point she meets someone from Russia and the guy from Russia is like there are no gay people in Russia even though he's like very clearly gay and she's like statistically there have to be and he's like nope. So like exactly exactly that. But Harvey Milk was the first openly gay person elected to public office in California

and one of the first in the nation. So this is really, I've been sad all morning because I kind of got to the end of the book yesterday afternoon and then this morning. But his big thing was to be out and proud and don't hide yourself and don't let them force you to hide. You know, that was like his big things. I read the book, The Mayor of Castro Street by Randy Schiltz. And this was written in like 1980. So like really quickly after all of this happened was the book. So it was good. I recommend it.

So Harvey Bernard Milk was born on May 22nd, 1930 in Woodmere, New York, which is just outside of JFK, so like very close to the city. Like you could say you lived in like Queens, kind of. He had one older brother named Robert. His parents were both in the Navy, which is cool. And like they're both military people and then they settle down in Long Island area. And while he was very young, Harvey would go. to the city and like watch the opera and he while he was there he would

like meet men in Central Park because he knew he was gay and he was sexually active by the time he was like a young teen in like private you know in like not private in like the woods not getting you know what I mean rambles yes and this is like

the 1940s you know so like lavender scare stuff that you talked about in the past is like happening now as well he during world war two i'm pretty sure that his parents like knew that he was that he was gay or that something was different they told him about how in warsaw before world war two um germany had been heading headed towards having gay rights like and we had talked about this

like before like parts of that part of europe had been very progressive and then obviously took like a huge turn um and gay people were some of the first people to be killed in concentration camps yep so he was like aware of this and his parents would tell him about it um Harvey went to college in Albany. He wrote for the newspaper. He played sports. After college, he just left. He never really returned.

People like thought that was kind of weird. Like some people would come back for reunions and such. He was like, whatever. He was a Goldwater Republican and conservative. And he was officially a Republican until 1972 when he became a Democrat. After college, he went into the Navy. It was the Korean War. And he was a diving officer at a submarine rescue ship.

and then a diving instructor in San Diego. So he was pretty successful in the Navy. But in 1955, he resigned at the rank of lieutenant junior grade because he was forced to accept an other than honorable discharge rather than be court martial because they found out that he was gay. Got it. Which they were doing, you know, all the time. So something to point out now is that happened a lot.

So men would join the military for, Korea and for Vietnam and for like these wars. And before they got sent out to war, they would go to California to do basic training and such. Then if they were caught or like outed in some way for being gay, they would just stay. And that's why there's, that's why that when Harvey starts like doing his political stuff in San Francisco, there's a lot of gay men because a lot of them stayed after being discharged from the military because they couldn't go home. No way. That's why. San Francisco's gay? Yeah, that's a big part of it

because a lot of people would end up there and they get kind of stranded there and then what's the option? You go home to like Kansas and tell your parents that you got kicked out

of any of you were being gay. No. You just stay, you know? So this way you can like stay in a community where people are like you and you can start trying to live and look at outlife.

So that's kind of where it started. But still go very early. It's in like the 50s and the 60s. So Harvey didn't do that yet. He wasn't in California yet, but that made a lot of sense to me. as like a reason why there'd be a lot of people there. That means like if Alabama was where they did training for the Navy,

then it would be the gay capital of the world. Could have been. Does Alabama hit an ocean? I don't know. I don't know geography. Either. I mean, I probably couldn't put it out on a map, but I could try. Hold on, I'm going to open my water.

Harvey also in his life has a lot of boyfriends and lovers. He's one of those guys who, like, didn't believe in monogamy, just wants to, like, you know, know, hook up with a bunch of people, maybe have someone at home, that kind of thing. His type was like a young, skinny guy, was Harvey's type. His longest relationship was one of his first relationships with a man named Joe Campbell. So they met in New York and they lived together and then they moved to Dallas. And even though they lived together and were like, you know, roommates, quote, quote, quote, all the things.

When they got to Dallas, they couldn't get jobs because they were Jewish. So they had to move back. I did not know Harvey Milk was Jewish. Mm-hmm. That is, yeah, wow, okay. Yeah. They ran into every wood chipper. It's like anti-Semitism, homophobia, like the whole thing.

Exactly. So they moved back to New York, and it's the late 1950s. While they were there, Joe, like, gilded furniture and Harvey tried to find a job because he had studied math and he was a teacher for a little bit. He's also a little bit like, I think Harvey Milk was a little bit, I don't know what the where it is. I want to say controlling in his relationships as well because he would like love bomb Joe and then like also like control what he did a little bit. And it's kind

of a thing that keeps going for him because his partners are, his partners stay the same and he gets older, you know? So when he's like in his 40s dating someone in their early 20s, he has so much control but they also just like sends them tons of flowers and love notes and all these things. So they can't really like live their own life. So that's something that his partner seemed to have a little bit of contention with as

we go through a story. Can that be like just a product of the times like oh absolutely i think like back then like a 40 year old being with like a 20 year old wasn't seen as gross as I think most people see that today yeah

no totally so anyways we're all product of our times yeah it's all all sorts of things so eventually they him and joe break up and he gets into other relationships one of his partners Craig rodwell is one of the people who was considered one of the leading gay rights activist pre-Stonewall.

He opened up a bookshop called the Oscar Wild Memorial Bookshop in New York that was there until it closed in 2009. And he was one of the first people to advocate for a pride parade. So Harvey isn't political, but he's around people who are like starting to bring up a political. We got to do something right. Yeah, the first step is typically advocacy because it's something that you can attach yourself too easily. And then you start getting into the granular details, the policy, and then you get political. Exactly. yes so we're okay i'm like i'm like i did i'm like what happened i'm getting a text message i'm

like what okay i'm ignoring that so harvey tries to be a teacher he tries to be a stockbroker but like he doesn't like regular jobs and he decides to become a hippie because it's like the time so we never see him with long hair i don't think i would ever picture him with long hair but he had like long hippie hair he's very tall and he would just like wear like whatever he felt like later when he wears suits because you'll see him in suits when he's like a politician they're all secondhand like they're all like threadbare when they go through his closet after his death they like can't find anything that matches like he just like really didn't he just like kind of let that part not bother him um so while he was a hippie he moved to san francisco and just hung out for a while

he had like a very young boyfriend who was a teenager and they would like do puzzles and like hang out which also i think is a product of your time that's a little more problematic also it's funny And when you were talking about long hair and like picturing him, I literally just pictured Sean Penn with long hair. I know. I did kind of do too. And it was weird and I hated it. So he also he is traveling with some Broadway productions of hair and Jesus Christ

superstar, which is fun. And he's kind of doing nothing. And he's in San Francisco. He goes back to New York. He's kind of like fiddling around not really having a job. 1971. He's back in New York and he meets a man named Scott Smith. And him and Scott moved back to San Francisco.

Francisco in 1970 three yes okay yeah a lot of I haven't think there's like one gay person involved in the making of movie milk but yes sounds right so someone in the design maybe maybe like a hairdresser maybe like one

so in 1973 Harvey has a role of film developed and the place ruins it and he's annoyed so he starts a camera store it's on Castro Street in San Francisco and it is called Castro camera. It's never going to make any money, but it's actually going to be a decision that plops him in the right place to be part of the Gia Rights Movement and to like become a leader. Castro Street is a place with like a lot of gay businesses. It still is now, but it's like

now it's expensive. But then it was like four. Castro blows my mind because it is expensive and you would never know it when you're there. Yes, exactly. The people walking around look absolutely homeless and probably are and I was going to my car broken into there and I was like yeah this is a nice part of town I know I haven't really been in San Francisco but I've been in like Oakland I've been like it's not great here but we continue try your best right so now we're in San Francisco and we'll we'll talk politics there around around the Castro in the area so things are starting to happen because there's so many gay people and they're actually starting to like talk about it now.

So we have this like part of town. It's district five where people are kind of are moving. There are different people running for mayor, but you do need the gay vote and the gay dollar to win. So there are candidates that go and talk to the gay community because they know that they need them. The police department of San Francisco is a very, very conservative. So that's something to remember. And also another politician who's part of the story is Diane Feinstein,

who enters a picture right about now. So she knows, she's a moderate liberal, and she knows that she needs the gay community, but privately and legislatively, she's wary of it. We know people who've worked for her. I know she has since passed. We know people who really like her. I do know that, like, one thing that she did that is not great is when they were searching for Richard Ramirez, do you remember this part of the Nightstocker story? He wore, like, a very specific shoe, and she announced it in. a press conference.

So I do remember that show. I do. It's like my big memory of dying finds me. But what she goes through the day that Harvey dies is really wild. So we'll talk about that later. But she's like on the supervisor board with him and and other people as well. So at this point, Harvey says, quote, he's like kind of like messing, like not messing with, but like the

police are trying to mess with the area. They're not getting like their tax dollars spent the right way. and Harvey says, quote, I finally reached the point where I knew I had to become involved or shut up. He couldn't continue to just like yell about it and not do anything. So he starts to run for office and he starts with the office of supervisor,

which you're exactly right. It's like city council. San Francisco still has 11 supervisors. Each one of them is for a specific district. They oversee city services, neighborhood concerns, local laws, that kind of thing. They're like weirdly powerful. Like in California, in San Francisco

because you have to think about like the size and scale of the amount of resources, economic resources in California and San Francisco? Like, those people actually wield real power. Yeah. Yeah. So he, it's his first election. He still has long hair. He's still a little scrubby.

And the person he's, like, technically going against, like his biggest competition is sort of like the next in line guy, you know, so he really doesn't have a chance to win. But he does get a lot of votes, like more than people thought that he would get. He comes in 10th out of 32, which, you know, isn't last. That's actually not that bad. Yeah. And while right before he does get elective supervisor eventually, they'll change the law. But at this moment in time, his first, his first campaign, the way you vote is it's just whoever the top 11 people for supervisor and the whole city are become that board, like all the supervisors. But they change the law so that it's district by district. Because even this first election, if it was just district five, that's sort of that capital.

Castro, the Castro district is in, he would have won that district. Oh, so it was, well, that, no, that's not rank choice voting. I guess it is kind of like rank choice voting. Well, you're only voting for, kind of, but you're, well, it's not like range choice voiding. No. Rangro's voiding takes, like, there's still one person that wins at the end of the ballot, so. Right.

This one is just like the top, however many people or whatever. Or, like, I think you run for certain spots, but like, it's like you're running for spot number, whatever. but it doesn't correlate to a place of living necessarily. So he would have won if it had correlated to just that area. So that's why part of the reason that he campaigned to make that stops.

You could actually be in your district and represent it. So after Harvey's death, they changed it back to being a citywide election and then as far as I can tell right now it's back to being district level. So like it went to flipped a couple times. It makes so much more sense. Like I don't. Of course it does. Yeah. So

he is also unofficially now the mayor of Castro Street. He's getting people who are involved in his apartment above the camera store. It's like a campaign center. Everyone's always like, you know, they have a problem to come to him and he can help them fix it. He also, a big part of his philosophy also is not just for gay people who wants to work for everyone. So he became a really big supporter of unions.

The Teamsters endorsed him, him and the Teamsters. had a thing where the teamsters wanted a union and Coors beer wouldn't sign. So all of the gay bars boycotted Coors beer and it worked and they ended up signing the contract. So he was able to like do things like that to be like, we have economic power here in the gay community, you know? Nice. Yeah. And then he became friends with a lot of these like, so these like scruffy teamster union guys would like come down to the Castro Street to help with the campaign, which was all this fun because they'd be like. That had to be a site for both parties.

on what's going on um so the castro area is super interesting people can go there and feel safe they can come there and find community sometimes it would be annoying to some of the people who would live there longer that like all the new gays look the same you know they'd all come and like have the same outfit and they kind of look similar but then they just finally wanted to feel like they belonged somewhere you know and it was like kind of a new phenomenon to figure out who they are in a place where they can be themselves you know it's literally every town I mean yeah they say this same thing with Austin when I got like don't California my Austin. I was like this is just the nature of things. Yeah. Demographics change and you yeah exactly that's hilarious. So it's also bad because

prices became insane and we talked about this too like you but you were saying like you know a lot of people wouldn't couldn't afford their houses or like old like Catholic families would sell their house for like you know a little for however much money and then a year later it'd be worth six times as much you know like that's something. goes up, Harvey and Scott, they get pressed out of the castor camera and their apartment. They have to move. Like, the whole neighborhood just becomes really expensive, like, really quickly. But Harvey decides to get serious and, like, get those suits and cut his hair and, like, really have an actual campaign for supervisors. So he runs again in 1975, and he loses, but it's very, very close. And so this is the second campaign. He loses, but he's super close this time. And the new mayor that is elected that night is George Moscone. George Mosconi, is an Italian guy from California. He visits Harvey in his campaign office that night

and is like, I know you lost, but I want you in my cabinet, which is huge, because to acknowledge Harvey's campaign, like the day that he wins to be mayor of San Francisco. So George Miscone, just other things about him, he had been key in repealing sodomy laws

in California, so always someone like forwarding progressive causes. He appointed a police chief that some said it was okay for police officers to be gay and it made the police like it boiled the pot even more for them you know because like most of them were really pissed

that that would be a thing but like you said like they're already there right so North Wisconsin he was born on November 24th 1929 he's just a year older than Harvey he would be known as the people's mayor he was also in Korea he had worked away up in politics

he was a state senator before this he had four children and he seems like a pretty okay guy just FYI that's the mayor of San Francisco all right we're fans we'll get back to him so things aren't like just because like this is happening and harvey is like in the middle of this movement there aren't things aren't perfect um there are definitely gay people who are getting murdered um you know getting like picked up on like a street corner and then killed

things like that are happening um there are police beatings there's like all sorts of other things happening and in the meantime harvey is kind of working frantically to get this position to help his friends in the district to help makes everyone just go better. He's in his mid-40s and he does not think he will make it to 50. He talks about it all the time. He says, I don't have much time. I'm not going to be able to do this forever, things like that. He brings it up a lot to his friends. And he works like a very feverish pace. And have you, I know you haven't, I know you haven't seen Hamilton far as, but I just want to just ask if you haven't. You are correct. Okay. So in Hamilton, the second act, second act of things are always so sad. But in the second act, which is the sad act of

Hamilton, his wife sings him a song that is like, why do you write like you're running out of time? Like, why are you so, like, why can't you stop working? And that's kind of what Harvey was doing now. He was writing like he was running out of time. Like, he had no reason to actually think this, but he was like working like he was not going to make it to 50. In 1976, Mayor Masconia appoints milk or Harvey to the board of permit appeals, who was in the cab, in the offices, it makes him the first openly gay city commissioner in the United States, but he leaves that job within like eight months to go run for supervisor a third time. So by the way, when he is in that job and when he is a supervisor, he will be in the San Francisco City Hall, which is a building that

he loves and it has a grand staircase and he always takes a stairs. So he would never take the elevator. He was very, he just loved being in the grander of the building. So after that district bill was passed where it was like every district votes for their own supervisor, he runs in 1978. And this is when he does win. He runs against a man named Art Agnos, and Art Agnos likes him and tells him to talk about hope. He's like, they debate all the time, and he's like, Harvey, you're too, yourself is a little bit too, too sad. You got to think about hope.

You got to think about, like, good things. So he's, you know, working on that. And there's also an interesting side note is, while they don't endorse him, he does get a lot of help from the people's temple. You know who that is? I do recall this. Yeah, this is Jim Jones. That's Jim Jones. So his folks are in San Francisco right now, kind of, you know, living in like a high security compound, you know, doing all that.

And he, Harvey says, quote, to a, to a staffer, he says, quote, make sure you're always nice to the people's temple. If they ask you to do something, do it. And then send them a note thanking them for asking you to do it because he, like, knew that they're crazy, pretty much. Well, they're crazy, but they also had, like, a ton of power because they were like one boating. constituency like a single block so he's like be super nice to them but be wary you know like something's weird so he's also a bit of a mess he's not sleeping he's up and down he's just like trying to get this campaign over him and scott break up because scott's a little bit like i fell in love for the hippie and like who are you you know because now he's like really like trying to be a politician and

harvey continues on his campaign and it's also a time in america where christian conservatives are freaking out. And one big thing that was happening in Florida in Dade County, Miami, is a woman named Anita Bryant had a campaign called Save Our Children, which was like, save our kids from every bad thing that gay people are doing to them. And she won by a lot. It was like a special election, and there was rioting all over the country for this. And so gay people are starting to see their rights as they were solely getting them. They're slowly getting taken away as well, because it's like out in the zeit guys that people are worried about it

you know what did she run for and win she didn't run for anything she passed a special legislation to like stop to like pull back a bunch of gay rights laws in my in Florida oh okay all right they had like bid for it and then that weren't after she wins

in in California a San Francisco California State Senator named John Briggs he sees an opening and tried tries to do the same thing he has like another bill that would ban gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools throughout California. And then privately

he told the author of the book I read it's just politics. I don't really have anything against key people. He's just trying to like find that vote and win. Yeah, that's what like most people running for office do. They just follow the herd. Yeah. So Harvey wins and it's very exciting and

because of the redistricting like the making it you voted for your own supervisor also when he was sworn in was a single mother, a black woman, and a Chinese American, and those were all firsts, too. Nice. Of course.

People want people who look like them to represent them, you know? Yeah. Which is exciting. And then also, who was sworn in the same day as Harvey Milk is supervisor Dan White. So Dan White was born on September 2nd, 1946. He was in Vietnam. He's 16 years younger than Harvey. He was a police officer.

He was a firefighter. He had a history of beating up black people. he saved a woman and her baby from a building when he was a fireman and the paper calls him all-American you know he's just like an all-American white guy who's not great he was married and had three children and he was a Democrat but he was on the more conservative side so a lot so like I said there are 11 supervisor positions so he was like the sixth vote to stop a lot of the things that Harvey wanted to do a bunch that they started to get kind of frustrated with each other. But when Harvey was a supervisor, he actually, this is interesting and it applies to you

literally right now. He helped pass laws that you have to clean up your own dog poop in San Francisco. Now that people do that. I hope people do that. Um, no, I think it's human poop they don't clean of. I think they clean back their dogs. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, he was one of the first people to do to put laws on that. He wanted tax reforms, new industries in the neighborhood, low cost housing. Um, he, you know, worked with other minority groups and labor unions because he was like, we're not just going to serve gay interests. We're going to help everyone when we have the opportunity. He, his, his big accomplishment was an anti-discrimination ordinance from 1978 where

it protected gay men and lesbians from discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations for the city. So that was like really great. And the New York Times was like, this is the most stringent and encompassing in the nation of all gay rights laws. So super good stuff happening, and that passed as well. He also, again, insisted that people don't remain, don't keep silent, that they talk about who they are. So he said, quote, the us is, those have been oppressed.

I'm tired of the conspiracy of silence. So I'm going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out. So I was like he kept continuing to be loud about it. He has, in 1978, his most popular speech is the Hope speech. And he talked about, you know, he did this after a parade where it's a picture you might see of him where he's a convertible and has a big sign and like a lay around his neck. The sign says, I'm from Woodbury, New York.

So he wanted people to say all the places that they were from and they all got together in San Francisco and how they felt safe there. Part of that speech is very similar to saying, like, we have to come out. We will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets. we have to come out to fight the lies and the myths and the distortions. So he was really a big advocate in that. His personal life while he was supervisor and like up into that campaign, after him and Scott broke up, he dated a man named Jack Lira, who was like definitely an alcoholic and would cause scenes everywhere that they went.

Like he would just like always be yelling and causing commotion. God, even when you're gay, you can't escape it. It's like there's always that partner when you're like successful who's just like just an absolute dumpster fire that follows you around and causes a seat yeah everybody everybody was embarrassed like it was terrible and so they broke up and then one day harvey gets back into his apartment and he finds a series of notes on the ground um leading to the back of the apartment where jack has died by suicide by hanging himself and it's pretty selfish that's pretty awful and selfish and um yeah i don't feel bad for me i think he's a piece of shit for doing that

to him he left like mean notes all over the apartment like hid them in places so harvey would find them later what a piece of shit like harbara met his mother at the funeral and his mom said this isn't your fault like he was just like this you know so initially dan white and harvey bill could get along they both are new to being supervisors um harvey was went to dan's son's baptism like they were they were they got along and it started to kind of grow apart pretty quickly um often like i said white was a sixth vote and stopping things from getting passed and white became really frustrated with his role as a supervisor so he quits so on november 10th i think we're in 1978 okay november 10th 1978 they've like barely been in in their office they haven't even

had a whole year as supervisors dan white decides to quit so he's the other guy that was like The All-American police officer guy, he quits. He has a potato stand on a pier that he wants them more time at, which, like, I also want us the more time at a potato stand. Sorry, what's a potato stand? He just gives you raw potatoes. No, they give you cooked potatoes. Like a baked potato.

You just hands you a whole baked potato. And then while you're walking on the pier, you just spoon baked potato in your face. I feel like you're saying that, like, it's a bad thing. How does it sound weird to you? You don't think this is weird? Like, would you ever walk up to a guy and, like, give me a hot potato? walk around with this might walk around hot potato not like a random person but if it was a man in like a

potato shaped truck yes i would okay all right but still no coconuts the walking around potato yes but definitely not a coconut yeah no i'll definitely walk around the big potato i have no problem doing that so the equivalent salary to today's money it's about like 47000 dollars a year so dan was like i have four kids i can't have my family on this in this amount of money and he has to also take care of his potato sand. So he resigns. He writes a letter to Ms.coni says, I'm not. I don't want to be a supervisor anymore. So

Musconi says, great. Thank you. Whatever makes one calls and they're going to move on. He has to appoint someone new. So he has to make a decision to figure out who it's going to be. But in the meantime, Dan White changes his mind. He goes back, like, remember that episode of Seinfeld where George quits and then pretends he didn't?

I never saw that. That's almost exactly what is happening right now. He quits and then comes back and he's like, well, I want a job back. Let's just get it to me back. You don't have to do anything else. And he's going, he's like, well, I can't really do that. You already quit. Like, I already have gears in motion to appoint someone else.

So they're trying to figure out, like, exactly what to do. So Dan's mad, but he wants his job back anyway. So in the meantime, so that's the number 10th when he quits. And a couple of days later, he wants to come back. Do we know why he wants to come back? I think he was getting pressured by his constituency of more conservative people. They're like, they're going to replace you with. someone who is more progressive that's not what you promised us you know and getting like pressure like

we're not going to come to your potato stand yeah we're going to boy comp potatoes yeah so that that's why it was because people are pressuring him to go back because they were like they're going to find someone who doesn't represent what we represent as the more conservative faction of this district so he's getting like that kind of pressure so november 17th and 18th so just a week after Dan White quits is when the people's temple all die by suicide in Guyana. So they had just went there and Congressman Leo Ryan went to go see, because some of the families in San Francisco, but asked him to go and check on their friends. Most of the people's sample family were in San Francisco.

And then he gets killed, news reporters get killed, and then 900 people or so died by suicide. So everyone's running around trying to figure out what to do because this is like obviously a tragedy for the community. because they knew those people, and they worked with them, and they were like, how could this have happened? Dan White says, quote, you see that one day I'm on the front page and the next time swept right off when the news coverage went away from him. Which is a shitty thing to say. A little bit. So November 27th is the day, 1978, is the day that Muscunie is about to announce White's replacement.

The night before Harvey Milk goes to the opera, calls a bunch of friends. He writes a letter that says, I went to the opera. it was a beautiful life is worth living and mailed it off to a friend in new york that friend wouldn't get that letter until after he was dead he called a bunch of people and like talked in the phone for longer than usual which also reminds me a little bit of like you're running out of time like what do you do when you know when you have a feeling you know so he did all of that and the next day he went to work like normal um that day miscoine was supposed to announce white's replacement and dan white decides to go to city hall and he can't walk in the front door

because he has a gun. So he crawls through a window in the basement to avoid the metal detectors. And someone sees him and he's like, oh, I'm just in a hurry. Like, that's not normal. What are you talking about? He goes to Mascone's office. Mascone's like, Dan, I can't put you back in your position. But let's like talk this out.

He takes him to like a second part of his office where he has like a little bar. He like makes him a drink and he's like, let's just talk about it. And Dan White takes off, takes out his gun. shoots Mascone in the shoulder and the chest and then the head and he is now bleeding out and dying on the floor of his office. People didn't really hear it because it was kind of like a back part of the muffled office. So Dan White leaves and the person is supposed to meet with Misconi next is waiting outside. He doesn't go in until five minutes after the time that he was supposed to meet with him. But he's like, is he okay? What's going on? You know? Yeah. And by that time he's dead. Dan White walks to his old office through the hall. While he's walking, he refills his gun. Was he mad? I missed Goney because he was going to continue on to assign a seat to someone else? Yeah. Okay. So it was revenge. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. He walks back to his office. He passes Diane Feinstein's office and her assistant to trying to get his attention. But we need to talk to you because they knew that like he was going to be mad about this. They didn't know they'd already talk to the mayor. They didn't know the mayor was dead. They were just like, you know, what's going on?

He sees Harvey, him and Harvey walk into a room together and he shoots Harvey three times in the body. Those three shots would not have killed him, but he shoots him again in the head, and that did it. Harvey milk's last words were, oh, no. Do we know why he wanted to kill Harvey? Why didn't he kill Feinstein? I think he was, Harvey was a person who was most excited about him not being on the board anymore. Oh, who's why lobbing Misconi? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely lobbying Mascone to replace him. He didn't want him on the board anymore. Yeah. Yeah. So White leaves City Hall. In the meantime, like Diane Feinston, hears shots from her office and people go running to try to figure out what to do.

She will become mayor because the mayor has died and she was the chair of the board. And then eventually she'll also win her election the next time it's an actual election. Dan White leaves, meets his wife at a train station, goes out to dinner, and then turns himself in. So he just, they all know it was him and they're all looking for him. A lot of Harvey Milk's friends will find out about it on the news because And it'll kind of be like the mayor's been killed and then and someone else. And they're like, who else is it? That's the news across the country.

A lot of them find out that way. So as far as like who replaced Harvey Milk and all of those that, all those things, that's sort of like a whole other thing. But one thing that it was wild is he had a tape that was like, play this in case I get assassinated. Essentially. And it was like, if I get shot in the head, play this. And it listed people who he thought could be. replacements for him who he thought shouldn't be a replacement for him

his friends will run one of his campaign managers a young lesbian woman but somebody else ends up winning but like it's not the same as it was when Harvey was there like of course like afterwards damn white looks like Dexter Michael yes he does he does he's creepy yeah um so Harvey milk donates his eyes to to someone who needs eyes just FYI um his ashes were were scattered in the bay with a bunch of

Kool-Aid as a joke after Oh, because of the people's simple? Yeah. It wasn't Kool-Aid. Yeah. So I know that. So Dan White would be tried, obviously.

The jury was all white men, all straight white men. The defense was the, quote, Twinkie defense, which was that he ate too much junk food and that messed with his mind. Oh, is that where that came from? Yeah.

And that he, like, didn't know, didn't really know what he was doing that he had a gun because he was used to having a gun and you're like but he climbed through the freaking window like all sorts of things and he ended up being convicted of a manslaughter which is an insanely low conviction and he got seven years in in jail Josh Rowland's a good casting call he is with that so he puts his hair over his forehead yeah it's pretty good um so after Dan White's kind of crappy sentencing. There were riots. They called them the White Night riots, aimed at for Jonestown also, because that was the night that everybody died. And things just went in and out of being good. Rents up now is expensive. People dispersed without a leader. Others stayed, but obviously, like, there's still, you know, gay rights fights to be had. Dan White only served five years in prison. He moved home with his family.

Feinstein told him not to come back to San Francisco. The mayor of L.A. said, we don't want him here either. You know, like, you know, Want this murderer here. And he ends up going back to San Francisco. Eventually, in 1984, a documentary about Harvey Milk won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. In 1985, Dan White died by suicide on October 21st in his car in his garage with he left the car on. It seems like a really troubled person. Yeah.

Yeah. So. Oh, so he was probably repressed, too. Maybe he was gay. I know. Harvey did call him a closet case. Maybe that's true. I mean, you said he was raised Catholic and, you know, he was like,

this is the way I got to live my life, but this is a really way. I'm speculating, but like, that seems plausible. Maybe that's what he resented Harvey about the most was like, I'm jealous that you get to live who you are. Yeah, totally. I'm not, I'm not against that idea. I agree. So, obviously, we can remember Harvey Milk as a ground baker trying not to hide.

In 2009, obviously, post-humidly, He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2021, they named the U.S. Navy ship, U.S.NS, Harvey Milk. It's a John Lewis class for punishment oiler. And it is going to be renamed. I did hear about this. Because the Fox News host wants it renamed. So that's a bummer.

And it's not just like they named a boat for a movie in the Navy. You know what I mean? What was it named before? Before that. I think it was a new boat. In 2021, it was a new boat? I think so. Interesting.

Okay. Big does. Yeah, I don't know. Big Navy thing. So, okay, I'm going to read a little bit from a speech that Harvey Milk did in 1973, which is early before he won because he didn't win in 1977, that he did when he called himself a populist person running for office. And he's talking about.

the people who are fighting against gay rights in America and he says quote I just pulled this from like the middle of it but he says quote do they ever read history because of the failure of their family of their church they are attempting to make

the police force and diministers while crimes against victims increases this false morality is against the Constitution if they do not like the Constitution let them amend it let them scrap the Declaration of Independence and in the meantime let them go back to God with immorality and become ministers.

Instead of spending time trying to get the death penalty passed, let them re-read the Ten Commandments. Let them teach the Commandment, Thou shalt not kill. I know of no commandment that says thou shalt not smoke marijuana. I know of no commandment that says thou shalt read certain books. I know of no commandment that says thou shalt not walk naked. Why are they such moralists when it comes to the Ten Commandments and not anti-moralist, or it comes to man's commandments, and such anti-moralist when it comes to God's commandments? Let me have my tax money go for my protection, if not for my prosecution.

Let my tax money go for the protection of me. Protect my home, protect my streets, protect my car, protect my life, protect my property. Let my minister worry about me playing bar dice. Let my minister and not some policemen worry about my moral life. Worry about gun control, not marijuana control. Worry about mental care for the elderly, not about hookers. Worry about child care centers and not about what books I might want to read. Worry about becoming a human being and not about how you can prevent others from enjoying their lives.

because of your own inability to adjust to life. Yeah, it's well said. Yeah. I will say one thing that I just read about the ship, the military ship called the Harvey Milk currently. Very, very ironically, apparently last year during Gaza war process, nine pro-Palestinian protesters like went on the ship to create like a disturbance and chain themselves to the ship.

which is like you realize they would have thrown Harvey milk like lit them on fire and throw them off a roof like yes

it's like it's like you all not see the irony in this but anyways yeah yeah um

sweet that's fun story and also I do remember I did really like that movie um so yeah it's I think it's just called milk

so go check it milk yeah yeah i remember being sad that was when sean penn hadn't transcended into his like weird i'm super duper rich and now i'm gonna be like a change maker in the world that was like before he started like going and interviewing el chapo and doing weird shit but it's after he was in jail for domestic abuse yeah he beat madonna really early on like he got he beat her ass like really early I mean, that was like, oh, and he was in jail with the nightstocker. Oh, my God, you're right. Everything comes full circle.

Full circle. Wow. Very fun. Yeah. Sweet. All right. Well, thank you for sharing. I will have a call out for everyone if y'all love baked potatoes.

Actually, you know what? Write to us and tell us what kind of potatoes you like. Do you know, d'nful pod, jibble.com. Yeah. I kind of feel like my answer might be any potato, but I don't know. I'm not huge on twice baked. potatoes. Oh, I love twice-cake potatoes. Yeah, I know. Everybody does. I don't make them because it's so much work if you make them twice. It's a lot of work. I know. I know. That's a way too much work.

But I do, I do wish a potato cooked faster. So if there's any genetic engineers in the audience, can you please make that? Make a faster cooking potato. Yeah, our favorite thing is, it was lighting the fireplace during the winter and then throwing potatoes beneath it. That was the best thing. Really? Yeah, he's wrapped in the aluminum pool. You put it like in the fire and And then you pull it out, and it's nice to cook, seeming hot, and just load it up with all the goodies. Wouldn't you want that in a stand? It's not a walking around food. But I don't, I think.

Things between bread is walking around food. But there's also, like, if you just had it in, like, a foil, you could eat it and you eat the whole thing. And then you just have a ball of foil then. I guess, I guess. It's also hot. I also am picturing this on the beach. I don't think there is on the beach, but also I don't have one of a big tear on the beach. But if you're in San Francisco, like, it is kind of cool.

It is cold. It's foggy. It's moody and like a hot potato. I mean, I don't know. If you live in San Francisco, right to us to tell us, like, are there hot potato vendors, like lining your streets? Is it like taco vendors in Austin? Like, I don't know. Maybe it is.

I feel like I need to start a potato stand now. What do you think that would cost? You might need to start with like at least 50 bucks for the potato. So you're in 50 bucks already. It's like a one potato. How much can it cost? I don't know. Sweet.

Well, we'll list of it will keep going for millennia, I'm sure. I did. Nadine did say that she was also pro-coconutsi win by a landslide. That's my other news. There you go. Thanks for conceding. It's very big of you, very noble. Sweet. Do we have any other mail that you want to read out here?

Nope. That's it. Thank you, everyone. If you have any ideas or questions or anything, Doomedafelpod at gmail.com and doomed to fail on all socials. Sweet. We'll go and cut out there. Thank you. Cool. Thanks. Thank you.