The San Francisco of Fuller House

I’m a usually cynical 32 year old woman from Toronto. I like wearing black lipstick, getting facial piercings, and reading Naked Lunch.

I write articles about “hacking” (information security), I play with password crackers, sometimes I like opening old video game ROM files in hex editors.

When I can save up the $250.00, I’ll buy another pair of 6-inch platform shoes with skulls on them. My current pair, which I bought in 2014, are wearing out.

When I’m really frustrated, I like to pick up a really bloody violent video game like Battlefield 4 or Dragon Age: Inquistion and beat the crap out of artificial, digital people.

And… I’m eagerly anticipating the launch of Fuller House tomorrow, February 26th.

People sure are complicated, eh?

When Jeff Franklin originally started developing Full House, its working title was House of Comics. It was supposed to be a show for adults about three stand-up comedians who share a house together, predictably getting on each other’s nerves. There were no children in Franklin’s first pilot script draft.

But in the mid-1980s, The Cosby Show was all the rage. ABC said to Franklin, “We like this. But let’s make it a family show.”

Although two of the three male main cast members were professional comedians (Bob Saget and Dave Coulier), only one of the three main male characters remained a comedian- Coulier’s character, Joey Gladstone. Bob Saget’s character, Danny Tanner, was a sports show host for the first season, and the host of “Wake Up San Francisco” from the second onwards. Franklin’s friend, pretty boy John Stamos, was cast as Jesse Katsopolis (Jesse Cochran in the first season, until Stamos was able to convince Franklin to change his character’s name to reflect his Greek heritage). “Uncle Jesse” was a musician with odd jobs in different seasons of the show.

And the kids who were shoehorned into House of Comics as it became Full House are now adults. DJ Tanner (now DJ Tanner-Fuller… nice double entendre!) is a recently widowed veterinarian with two sons, Stephanie Tanner is a struggling musician. Michelle Tanner, played by Mary Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen, isn’t seen in the show because she’s busy in New York working on her fashion design career. It’s art imitating life because the Olsens actually are high profile fashion designers for the wealthy, with them being even wealthier… a combined net worth estimated at about a billion dollars. They are now too good to work on a Netflix show that revises old glories, the American sitcom career they had starting from when they were nine months old.

So, to switch the three male adult main characters of Full House to the three female adult main characters of Fuller House, Andrea Barber’s Kimmy Gibbler character finally gets to live in the old Tanner house, a single mother pushing 40 with a preteen/early teenage daughter.

I’m excited about watching Fuller House tomorrow, because although I’m now a working class “goth hacker chick,” in the 90s, I was a comfortably middle class little girl who idolized Stephanie Tanner. Nostalgia is my kryptonite, it cuts through my cynical facade.

I will find the show a reminder of the supposedly good old days when I didn’t worry about buying groceries, or my anorexia, or the rapidly widening gap between the rich and the poor.

I do think I have a pretty good idea of what to expect.

I don’t expect clever writing. Watching Full House now as an adult, I can see how cheesy and unfunny most of the jokes were, and how unrealistic the show was in many ways. It’s the TV equivalent of McDonald’s french fries. As a kid, it’s awesome! As an adult, it tastes incredibly processed and corporate and bland.

Now as an adult, I ask myself in detail how realistically plausible the show is…

Danny Tanner had a lucrative TV gig. Perhaps Joey and Jesse (and his later wife Rebecca) pitched in with the household expenses occasionally? San Francisco real estate was a lot more affordable in the 80s and 90s.

So now, the mortgage has been completely paid off for years. Danny’s eldest daughter DJ Tanner-Fuller inherited the house. I estimate, given San Francisco’s punishingly expensive real estate market now, the Full House house is probably worth about $4 million in 2016. Especially since the attic was converted into an apartment that the Katsopolis spouses and twin children could comfortably live in. Hmmm… maybe $5 million. An equivalent house here in Toronto (although our Victorian era homes don’t look quite like that) would be about $1 million or a little more.

I’ve never been able to afford to be a homeowner, so what are the property taxes on a $4–5 million house? $15,000 per year? $20,000 per year? Let’s assume $30,000 per year to be on the safe side.

Yeah, veterinarians make really good money, especially in San Francisco where a lot of rich people have pets. So it’s plausible that DJ Tanner-Fuller makes at least $200,000 per year. Stephanie probably can’t contribute to the household expenses as a struggling musician. I have no idea what Kimmy Gibbler does, so I’ll find out tomorrow.

The San Francisco of Full House and Fuller House is kind of fantasy-like, though. Well, not for the Justin Kellers and Jeremy Stopplemans of the world. Wealthy San Franciscans probably see a familiar world in Fuller House, even though no one there (to the best of my knowledge) works in Silicon Valley.

Now here’s a very different San Francisco, the San Francisco that a lot more people have to deal with…

Well, I hear that just a few days ago, there was an order to remove a homeless tent encampment in San Francisco.

But, I don’t hear of any plans to house the displaced people.

A lot of San Francisco’s homeless were, at one point, middle class. But neoliberal policies since the Reagan era (continuing into the Obama era) have destroyed the middle class. And Silicon Valley’s influence has made housing in the Bay Area outrageously expensive.

And the San Francisco/Bay Area poor who aren’t homeless could become so at any moment. There are countless thousands of Talia Janes.

I got immensely angry at all the vitriol thrown at her for her open letter to her now former CEO. So I wrote my own response that went kind of viral, at least by the standards of my articles.

Other people on Medium wrote similarly wise and compassionate responses to the nasty bootstraps! cult. I’d like to share them here:

A self-righteous open letter to people who write self-righteous open letters to people who write self-righteous open letters

In Defence of Talia Jane

Why Isn’t Anyone Calling Out Stoppelman?

Why I Gave Talia Jane Some Money

And then there’s the Justin Keller matter. You know, the tech bro who doesn’t realize that he’s rich who wrote to San Francisco mayor Ed Lee, begging him to remove the sight of the homeless from his cowardly, heartless eyes?

Here are some good rebuttals to that asshole:

An Open Letter to L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and Police Chief Charlie Beck

Open Letter to Justin Keller

Bay Area Native Here…

Open Letter to Justin Keller, from Edna, one of your servants in San Francisco

I highly doubt that the disaster that’s brewing in San Francisco that’s not an earthquake will be addressed on Fuller House.

But if Candace Cameron Bure (actress of DJ Tanner-Fuller) was as true to Jesus’ ideals as her born again Evangelicalism would want to believe, she’d actually use her fame and influence to fight for San Francisco’s rapidly growing poor.

Jodie Sweetin (actress of Stephanie Tanner) has probably seen more shit in her life than any of the other Full House/Fuller House cast members. I’ve read her likely ghostwritten autobiography, Unsweetined. It’s a good book! Facing a meth addiction and coming out of it intact is a reason to respect her, not shame her. But she was a more privileged meth addict than many. She always had a roof over her head. I suppose the Full House residuals helped. I really like Sweetin and Stephanie Tanner, who is my favourite Full House/Fuller House character. She likely knew some meth addicts who really struggled to survive financially. I hope she uses her platform to speak out in support of medical treatment instead of the Drug War for meth addicts. And I hope she speaks up about inequality, but I’m not holding my breath.

One of my heroes, Anita Sarkeesian, says that it’s okay to like problematic media, as long as you understand why it’s problematic. So I’ll employ that attitude when I watch Fuller House tomorrow. Fuller House will be junk food for my mind, but comforting nostalgia for my soul.

But keep in mind, tech bros of San Francisco… The revolution is happening. The class war has been instigated by the rich, not by the suffering. We’re just fighting to survive.

Heed Holly Wood’s warning:

San Francisco is Strategically the Worst Place to Barricade, Techbros

Wake Up, San Francisco!