Why Mario0o0o0o0o0o And Abe From Bay Area Memes Teamed Up To Make A Documentary On Gentrification

San Francisco is one of America’s greatest cities. In terms of natural beauty and architecture, it’s California’s crown jewel. But the beautiful buildings and hills that go higher than Heaven are still less important than one aspect of San Francisco that the city seems all too keen to sacrifice — the people.

While I love the fog covered vistas that allow San Franciscans to temporarily teleport into the clouds, I love the people that fill its street more than the aesthetics it’s famous for. Without San Francisco, specifically low income San Francisco, I wouldn’t exist. When my father first came to San Francisco from Texas, he was a delivery driver and my mother was a cashier. Despite just being a cashier, my mother was able to afford her apartment in the Mission District. It sounds too good to be true these days, but my mother was a Mission native who was able to work a regular, blue collar job and afford housing in her neighborhood without 500 roommates. It sounds like a dream, but it was normal back then. 

While I never had the privilege of growing up in the City, my childhood was defined by the East Bay. Oakland, and smaller towns like Martinez and Vallejo shaped me into the person I am today. Despite growing up in the East Bay, I would take frequent trips into the city with my mom to visit friends and family members. My favorite neighborhoods were Chinatown and the Mission District. They felt otherworldly. The bustle of Chinatown perfectly framed by red lanterns while iconic structures like Coit Tower and Transamerica Building hovered from above made the area feel like magic masquerading as a neighborhood. The Mission District, a neighborhood that I’m proud to say my family is from, felt more like a painting than a place. When describing urban neighborhoods with high diversity, the word melting pot is often used, but the Mission is anything but a melting pot. Every type of person remains defined in all of their otherness beside everyone else. It’s a place of juxtaposition. A place where every type of person from every corner of the world shares the same sidewalk. 

These are the types of things that make San Francisco special. There’s nothing wrong with working in tech or eating avocado toast, but those things don’t give cities their souls. The immigrants who work hard every day so that San Francisco doesn’t fall apart, and just want to sit in a park to enjoy a beer after a long day of work with a few of their friends add significantly more to this tiny peninsula than Twitter or Meta ever could. 

The writers standing in circles at the 16th and Mission BART Plaza every Thursday to share their words matters to San Francisco a lot more than a Waymo ever could. The Buskers at the Downtown BART stations make me happier than any app ever has. You know what’s better than a mural depicting black joy? Black people that are able to comfortably live in the neighborhood where the mural would be because they were never kicked out. 

The City of Sensitive Frauds will be premiering tomorrow at the Great Star Theater in Chinatown. This article isn’t to promote the film, the premiere is sold out, and I want to thank every single person who bought a ticket. This article is to provide context for why the film exists. Coverage of gentrification is nothing new in the Bay Area, but the coverage always puts the people most affected by it in the background. That’s why we needed to make this film. To create a film based on primary sources. This isn’t a movie that intends on shoving statistics in your face. This is a film that simply asks you to listen. Listen to GunnaGoesGlobal as he talks about how San Francisco destroyed the FIllmore District. Listen to DoggTown Dro as he explains how police brutality is used to uphold a class and racial caste system. Listen to Dean Preston as he explains how the bureaucracy is weaponized to maintain the status quo. And most importantly, listen to the unhoused community as they explain what their day to day lives are like in the “progressive” Bay Area. 

If you do have a ticket and you’re able to make it to the showing, thanks. Just remember the film isn’t asking for anything except for the Bay Area to be the place it pretends to be in the first place. 

If you are unable to make the premiere, East Bay dates will be announced soon!

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