'94110,' a new TV show about San Francisco's tech scene, is looking for cast members

This weekend, several San Francisco residents spotted an eye-catching sign being posted in the city and on Craigslist. The sign was a casting call notice for “94110,” a new TV drama that claims it will tell “the story of six leading technology executives living, learning, and loving together in San Francisco’s Mission District.”

The show is, apparently, not a joke. Uptown Almanac’s Kevin Montgomery reached one of the show’s producers, who described the show’s premise as “Mark Zuckerberg fan fiction,” and said, “We want to take the [Mission’s] new reality and do something with it.” (94110, as you may have guessed, is the Mission’s zip code.)

The Mission’s new reality — that of a neighborhood with a rich and ethnically diverse history that currently serves as a high-priced bedroom community for Silicon Valley tech workers, and a flashpoint in the city’s gentrification wars — is a complicated thing to capture on film. But you can’t exactly fault a TV production company for wanting to try. HBO’s “Silicon Valley” was just renewed for a third season, and shows like AMC’s “Halt and Catch Fire” have drawn praise for capturing the human side of the tech industry. (Bravo’s short-lived “Start-Ups: Silicon Valley” reality show fared less well.)

“94110” isn’t necessarily going to make it to your TV screen. According to the show’s producer, who declined to give his name to Uptown Almanac, the show hasn’t been financed yet, and is “looking for seed and angel investors right now.” But the casting call is slated for May 16th and 17th, and is open to anyone — the producers take pains to say on the sign that “each role will be cast with no preference toward age, race, or gender.” (Which, as many on Twitter pointed out, makes the show more progressive than the industry it’s about.)

If it gets made, “94110” may have to compete with “Girlfriends of Silicon Valley,” another tech show that sent out its casting notice earlier this year. Let’s just hope that both of these shows turn out better than their premises sound.

 
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