It's an outstanding movie. The move won a Golden Globe Award and the lead actress, Saorise Ronan, won a Golden Globe for a lead actress. The average critic's score is 99%. The director, Greta Gerwig grew up in Sacramento and attended St Francis High School. Wonderfully written and both touching and funny.

Ladybird, played by Ronan, does say something like "I'm not going to a boring agriculture school in Davis."

Well, apparently, no mention of sac state, the real local institution of higher learning. So i guess we will just have to be happy being “the boring ag school” as mentioned in a movie. Maybe Greta has hurt feelings over st francis high school’s many beatings by Davis High School. I still think it was a cheap shot aimed at a sac audience. If its better than Breakfaast Club i will go. If not, I don’t like coming of age movies and will wait for amazon so i can pause for a toilet break.

Very good movie. I missed the first few minutes didn't know it was local.

Is St. Francis an actual school?

Yes, St Francis is a private, Catholic, all girls high school in east Sacramento. High academics and great sports teams. The whole movie was filmed in Sacramento.

How far is that area from the Capital?

Saint Francis is just across the railroad tracks from Slac, on the backside of Hornet Stadium.

Set at St. Francis High School which is just over the tracks from the Slack State campus, notably just west of the soccer, softball and baseball fields. The actual filming for the scenes set in the fictional high school in the movie was done in Southern California. Ms. Gerwig grew up in an area called River Park which is due north of the Slack campus. Many exterior shots of Sacramento and particularly East Sac in the movie. Gerwig has commented that filming in Sac is expensive compared to Southern California.

J Street is a major artery in Sacramento. The Capitol building is located between L and N and 10th and 15th Streets. Going back to your early algebra days, think of the older sections of Sac as a grid, with the numbered streets running north and south and the lettered streets running east and west. The northwest corner of the older section would be essentially 1st Street and A Streets. (For some geographical reasons those streets don't exist.) If you were to head east on J from the downtown area Slack State is at about the 6000's, or 60 blocks from the river and Old Sac. The actual St. Francis High School is at about 58th and M.

Reference is made in the movie to the "40s" which is a nice, established, tree lined area basicaly between J Street and Folsom Blvd (think P street) and between 38th Street and 47th Street. Realtors and insecure residents of this area call it the "Fab 40s." The blue house where some of the exterior scenes were shot is in the 40s. The interior shots for a Thanksgiving meal (theoretically held inside the blue house) were also filmed in the 40s, however in a different house.

There is a scene set in McKinley Park which is between E and H and Alhambra Blvd. (think 31st St.) and 33rd Streets.

The view of Davis shown in the movie is common with high school kids here. It's too close...they have lived in the flat, hot valley for most of their lives and want to get away. If you are like Gerwig, and into drama and the related arts, you want to get to New York CIty. "If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere,..."

I grew up in a completely different time zone, but the people I met at Davis who were from Sacramento thought it turned out to be a good location. Far enough away that Mom & Dad didn't have to know what you were up to, but close enough if you wanted a home cooked meal.

I enjoyed the movie, but for me a lot of that is familiarity with the times, the settings and some of the people on whom characters were based.

Great write up! I loved the scene at the end with the Tower Bridge glowing in the background and the beautiful scenes of Ladybird driving along the river. Classic visions of the Sacramento River in the morning or setting light.

Loved picking out familiar scenes, even in the quick montages. Saw it at the Tower and of course the audience loved a shot of the theater they were sitting in. Quick shots of familiar signs: the Club Raven, Gunther's, the mural on the little store in mid-town, the J Street Post office, a house I have always admired in the 40s, (different than the blue house...) Catching some familiar faces in background shots. Like you noted, the bridges...

Can confirm, going to high school in the Sac area relatively recently my friends and I had a pretty indifferent view of Davis. Being a good school didn't really matter because it was too close to home to be interesting. Also the number of non-STEM college applicants outpaced the STEM students; it wasn't really on the radars of the English, business, and poli sci majors.

I will see the movie; but do think it is humorously anti-Davis from what i hear. I graduated from UCD, married, had kids, got job in sacramento, and lived in sacramento. Not in the Fab 40s, but in south sac. Basically, not a nice place to live unless you don’t mind a lot of crime or live in a gated community. So ultimately i moved my family back to Davis. But, back to the points being raised, at my work i was often criticized for being a weird “Davisite”, from the People’s Republic etc. and this was long before the Toad Tunnel. I learned that many sacramento people have this totally inane concept of what Davis or UC Davis actually is. I came to believe that it really is based upon a fundamental insecurity and jealous thoughts about what is really special about Davis- clean, safe, beautiful, college town, kid friendly and just a great place to live. So i lived happily in Davis for 30+ years, then retired and moved to the Sonoma Coast. Oh yes and this. I could not get a place to stay in davis last Halloweeen after i took my brother to SMF. Why i asked the motel clerk: “well many, many alumni bring their chirdren back to Davis to enjoy Halloween like they did because its so fun and safe here. They have very good feelings about Davis” Lastly, church attendance: “weird” Davis higher than sacramento. Go figure. . . . I do miss Davis!

Lots of the local churches (First Baptist, DCA, Chinese church etc) have a local partnership or have national denominal affiliations (Lutheran, Catholic, CRU) with the on-campus fellowships. Those who are involved with the campus fellowship are more likely to attend church on Sundays. Some of the Chinese or Korean churches heavily draw from the international student population. As someone who was involved in that circle of campus life, of the established fellowships, only IV (Professor Enderle is one of the leaders) had no official link to one of the town churches. While you didn't have to go to that fellowship's partner church, most usually go there due to convenience or familiarity. Of course, the really large fellowships had people attending other churches in town too.

My buddy started his undergraduate life at Cal and got mugged his first semester; he’s from Sausalito. He transferred to Davis thereafter and called it utopia. I’ve met many people who have taken there children to Davis and have absolutely loved it. Davis gets a lot of hate because they have a huge misconception that it is a “cow town”. Sadly, I sometimes think that the City likes to perpetuate that notion. I remember Davis as a city connected by green belts, having educated residents, and some of the most beautiful susnsets I have ever seen.

Davis is not the Bay Area, and it is not Sacramento either...

The comment about going to Davis takes up less than 30 seconds in a 90 minute movie. Hard for me to say that the movie is anti-Davis. As Aggies, we will all bristle at the comment, however brief.

The mother takes a pretty vicious cut at city college.

Ironically the lead character really wants to get out of Sacramento and go to school on the east coast. While there she takes a shot at Sac, and yet Greta calls this her love letter to Sacramento. I understand there is a also a brief Sacramento scene in another movie in which Gerwig acted.

I did not “bristle” from the movie; I heard these negative comments all the time when i worked in sac as i have previously posted. The sac people who look down on davis must have never compared walking down K street at night (very scary indeed) to walking downtown davis at night. Davis is very bright, vibrant, airy and safe. Question: why is UC Davis so heavily woman in enrollment? Again, its a very safe place compared to elsewhere. Maybe not Norway. But pretty damn close.

Complex question, not just Davis. We've had a focus on girls for 2-3 decades, some argue we have marginalized boys, others say emasculated. Look at the downfall of smaller college football. More young men in prison, we import millions of people. Young men down in all kinds of areas, undergrad, grad, etc., most more than 50% women, and still special programs to recruit women, not men.

I hope I did not step on any toes. Not my intent. I was responding to the comment that Lady Bird "is humorously anti-Davis from what i hear." I would say that from my point the movie takes a very brief shot at Davis, less than 30 seconds in a 90 minute movie. It could just as easily have been directed at UOP or that school on J St. which is closer to Ms. Gerwig's actual home than was her high school. Nothing else in the movie ever mentioned Davis. I bristled at the comment in the movie because I had gone to Davis, lived in Sac and heard it so many times.

Regarding Sac v Davis: Can't argue with a thing you say. Sac is a big little city with all of the attendant problems. Crime and homelessness probably are at the top. I spent my entire professional career north of K on the edge of Alkali Flats. K Street isn't even enjoyable in the daytime, much less at night.

My wife and I started renting in Davis, but careers, the cost of living in Davis, the commute, all weighed against continuing to live there. We were able to find a nice house in a relatively safe neighborhood in Sacramento and have lived here ever since. Last summer we went to the Music Circus and had to wait while some homeless person (a women at that) finished urinating in the street before we could park our car. I have purchased a "Club" for my car. I cringe when one of my children goes to an event at the Golden 1, and they are adults and no longer live at home. I used to enjoy the bike trail along the American River, but it has lost its allure as the homeless have taken over.

I have never personally experienced anyone here looking down on Davis but I hear that it happens. I think Sac is too full of itself, with little reason to be so. The town is too obsessed with shaping its image around a third rate, perrenial lottery pick NBA team.

But I digress...

There was also a theme about her good natured, unemployed father who got an MBA at Davis if I recall. Sac from 30 years ago to today seems to have changed a lot, good and bad. Midtown seems hopping. Food scene better.

I was surprised to see suburbs north of Sac with sketchy problems, homeless, shady people. Same thing in the Cal Expo area which seems nice, yet beggars on the boulevard. Perfectly suburban areas north of Sac, but I would read about crime on the light rail and friends warned against me taking it downtown. Their area seems like it used to be families, active, kids have grown and area aged? I wonder if Section 8 housing plays a role, some sketchy places near the local shopping area.

My guess is that private industry hasn't brought enough high paying jobs. I hear Elk Grove, which boomed, brought SoCal problems north? My guess also is a segment on the left don't like the police or religion, so these are big changes. Traditional nuclear families less.

I wandered into an area with expansive custom established homes, massive front lawns. ARC area? Really spectacular. Folsom seems great, people friendly, though some there said it was changing, complained that insular ethnic groups were coming in, not joining the wider community.