The Blog

I don’t think I’ve ever sat through a movie and felt like it was a documentary of the last five years of my life. “Medicine for Melancholy” was…well, medicine for me. (Sounds cheesy, I know.) It reminded me of why I love the city of San Francisco and why the City often disappoints me.

The movie was filmed completely in San Francisco, where I’ve attended college for the last five years (lived in, worked in, got drunk socialized in). The film addresses gentrification, a topic that I’ve discussed many times with a close friend/college buddy, who has since retreated to the east coast where a 7 percent black population in any of its major cities is an absurdity oddity.

Indeed, San Francisco is a beautiful place. There’s great diversity here. And at the same time there’s not. As more and more of the city’s black and/or poorer population is displaced, the City has become a place where running into a black man or woman in their 20s and with a college education is like finding a unicorn. You see “one” and then its suddenly gone. I’m often too ashamed to approach that person and tell them how nice it is to see them living, working, and socializing in the city. (And most of “them” don’t care, anyway…which is my next point.)

Many of the blacks that are here—the ones in their twenties and in or out of (or never finished) college—seem to consciously ignore the absence of a black middle class—as if being the only one in the room (the bar, the diner, the store) isn’t just a little bit odd. It’s their way of blending in with the overwhelmingly white and Asian crowds in the City’s interior neighborhoods. “If I ignore the fact that I’m the only black person here, maybe others will too.” There’s nothing wrong with choosing to not to care about the ethnic diversity of your environment. Honestly, there are some of “us” who care a little bit too much. But sometimes you (I) actually do long for an ethnic connection to someone in the bar, where the DJ is blasting The Fray, Incubus or random House tracks. (Anyone else feel weird for being one of the few in the bar/gallery who can actually catch and stay on the beat? I digress.)

One of film’s two main characters, Micah, described the remaining young blacks in the City as those who are into “punk (music), folk or whatever you don’t see on BET.” In some ways, I could say that I’m one of them. I’ll admit, I’m clinging to 1990s Philadelphia neo-soul, you know, the stuff with a conscious message. (Soulquarians.) I enjoy some folk music. But I’m holding on to my D’angelo, Erykah, Bilal and The Roots. I can’t tell you the last time I watched BET. I think I stopped watching after one or two semesters of black studies classes in college. Good riddance.

But Micah’s character makes a good point when he says adopting a more “indie” social lifestyle often means letting go of “blackness,” no matter which way you might define it.

Director Barry Jenkins, who I saw (and was too scared to approach) after the first screening on Friday at the SF Embarcadero theater, did an excellent job of presenting the race and gentrification discussion in a way that it’s usually occurred for me: spontaneously, while slightly inebriated and with heightened aggression.

My verdict: go see this film if you want to have any idea what my college social life has been like (minus the lover story). And Tracey Heggins: that’s one fine woman!

Director Barry Jenkins and actress Tracy Heggins (‘Jo)