authentic sacramento: a spoiler-free prolog to extra’s pizza

I don’t know if this is a pet peeve for oth­ers the way it is for me, but I ab­solute­ly de­test when a piece of fic­tion in­sists upon a real life lo­ca­tion and then does noth­ing to fac­tu­al­ly rep­re­sent that location. 

My short sto­ry, Extra’s Piz­za, writ­ten this sum­mer, takes place in Sacra­men­to. And it re­spects the set­ting as a char­ac­ter, un­like a lot of oth­er fic­tion stream­ing these days.

The most guilty thing I’ve ever seen is Click­bait (2021), which makes a big show of tak­ing place in Oak­land, while be­ing clear­ly half-shot out­side of Cal­i­for­nia, while not rep­re­sent­ing the re­la­tion­ship Oak­land lo­cals would have with po­lice, while even hav­ing the back­ground ac­tors be pre­dom­i­nant­ly white, while in­vent­ing a col­lege cam­pus in or­der to not just … move the sto­ry to Berkeley?

That said, al­most any­thing Hol­ly­wood that uses Sacra­men­to clear­ly knows noth­ing about Sacra­men­to, or doesn’t think it matters. 

We have a very spe­cif­ic cul­ture, as I sus­pect any city does, and it is not in­ter­change­able with any oth­er non-LA, non-SF Cal­i­for­nia city. 

Al­most for­got, Click­bait also goes to Sacra­men­to for a second.
“Sacra­men­to.”
It looks sus­pi­cious­ly like Atlanta.

Ob­vi­ous­ly, Sacra­men­to was a char­ac­ter in Lady Bird (2017). How­ev­er, Gre­ta Gerwig’s Sacra­men­to is not my Sacramento. 

Don’t get me wrong, it was ab­solute­ly re­al­is­tic. I’ve known lots of peo­ple in Sacra­men­to for whom Lady Bird rep­re­sents their Sacra­men­to. It just wasn’t mine. Be­cause, Sacra­men­to can be where I live now, lit­er­al­ly in Sacra­men­to, on the grid Down­town, or where Lady Bird lived, prob­a­bly 30–40 blocks east of me now. 

But!

Sacra­men­to can also be in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to: Natomas, Rio Lin­da, Carmichael, Cit­rus Heights, Or­angevale, North High­lands, Oak Park, Land Park, Ar­den, Fair Oaks, Ran­cho Cor­do­va, and of course, Gold River.

Every sin­gle sec­tion of this city has a phe­nom­e­non that I have not ex­pe­ri­enced when I have lived or vis­it­ed elsewhere. 

So, I men­tioned Click­bait and its bizarre de­pic­tion of Oak­land ear­li­er. The writ­ing there bumped ex­treme­ly hard for me be­cause I lived in Oak­land for two years for college.

Oak­land has a mas­sive class stra­ta, there are roach mo­tel apart­ments and there are man­sions. How­ev­er, that stra­ta is con­tained. You aren’t gonna find a man­sion in Fruit­vale. There’s no apart­ments in the Oak­land Hills, let alone ne­glect­ed ones. Hell, it’s hard some­times to just find some­thing to eat if you aren’t in a busi­ness district. 

Sacra­men­to also has a mas­sive class stra­ta. I live in one of the cheap­est apart­ments on the grid. I am in about six hun­dred square feet with no dish­wash­er, no garbage dis­pos­al, shar­ing two washer/dryer sets with at least twen­ty three oth­er neigh­bors, but prob­a­bly more like fifty. I share this apart­ment with my part­ner, and de­spite it be­ing re­al­ly cheap for the area, we are lit­er­al­ly only able to make it work here be­cause his fam­i­ly put mon­ey aside for him to at­tend school. 

I will not deny that be­ing on the grid is not the cheap­est part of Sacra­men­to in gen­er­al, but for our place, our rent is prob­a­bly only two or three hun­dred dol­lars high­er than an apart­ment some­where else in town. 

I am lit­er­al­ly two blocks away from a small man­sion. A cou­ple blocks from there is an apart­ment com­plex twice as ex­pen­sive as ours. To go to the doc­tor, also on the grid, I have to pass a tent city. Apart­ments are next to restau­rants are next to fam­i­ly homes are next to hos­pi­tals are next to the free­way are next to apart­ments. That means that the poor, the rich, the mid­dle class, the ser­vice in­dus­try and the biggest ass­holes they serve, all live and work with­in spit­ting range of each other.

It is re­al­ly com­mon for me to meet Sacra­men­tans who do not un­der­stand what class they are. Not rare in the Unit­ed States, where every­one thinks they’re mid­dle class, but it’s ex­ag­ger­at­ed in Sacra­men­to.

It is in­fi­nite­ly eas­i­er to un­der­es­ti­mate what you have, or over­es­ti­mate what you have, be­cause you’re as­sum­ing you’re on par with your neigh­bors, who can have lit­tle to no fi­nan­cial com­mon­al­i­ty with you. And not just if you’re liv­ing on the grid, but in every sub­urb, city, cen­sus-des­ig­nat­ed place, etc. that col­lo­qui­al­ly makes up Sacramento.

Life­long Oak­land cit­i­zens, in my ex­pe­ri­ence, were not be­fud­dled like that. 

So Extra’s Piz­za is about a piz­za restau­rant with a cock­roach in­fes­ta­tion, that delves into the so­cial con­texts of Sacra­men­to cities, and is si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly ab­surd and sad.

I put it on­line for free with the op­tion to do­nate: READ IT HERE.

It is also about a Sacra­men­to, iron­i­cal­ly not even my Sacra­men­to, but def­i­nite­ly not a Sacra­men­to that was filmed in Atlanta.

 

—mel­ony ppenosyne

Flom­mist Mel­ony Ppenosyne is a writer and weird artist type. In the last year alone, she’s trav­eled to Vir­ginia as a com­pet­ing poet, co-writ­ten a play on men­tal ill­ness that is present­ly be­ing pro­duced, and craft­ed a pub­lished es­say check­ing the priv­i­lege and scope of art gal­leries. Copy­right © 2021 Mel­ony Ppenosyne. 10th Street pho­to source.

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