Institute History
Description
Jimmie Fails, a young black San Francisco native, has a dream. He thinks night and day of how he can reclaim the beautiful Victorian home that his grandfather built in the heart of the city. It was the home he grew up in as a boy. But somewhere along the line, drugs trumped the mortgage and his parents lost Jimmie’s dream house. Now homeless and restless, Jimmie crashes with his only friend, Prentice, on the edge of the bay in the city’s last, crumbling outpost of black life. Every week, Jimmie and Prentice make a pilgrimage to Jimmie’s old house in the Fillmore district, where Jimmie tries to keep his dream alive. But all traces of the old neighborhood — once nicknamed the “Harlem of the West” — have been erased and replaced by artisan coffee shops, Labradoodle dog walkers, and Lululemon-clad joggers. It all adds to Jimmie’s sense of utter isolation and rootlessness. When Jimmie and Prentice show up one day to discover that the current owners of Jimmie’s house have moved out, Jimmie hatches a plan to take back his old home. It’s a dream that pushes Jimmie, and his friendship with Prentice, to the edge.