Jan 30, 2024
Melan Allen is a third-generation San Franciscan. In this episode, we get to know this born-and-raised food artist whom I met last summer at Fillmore Jazz Festival.
Melan's grandparents moved here
in the Sixties and lived in
San Francisco until the 2000s. Her mom's mom came to SF from Texas and was
part of a mass migration west, when
her mom was very young. In our conversation, Melan says that
she sometimes wonders what it
would have been like if she had grown up in Texas instead of The
City.
Her dad was born here and
raised in Western Addition/Hayes Valley. Her mom also grew up in
that part of town. Perhaps naturally, when the two met and started
to raise a family, they stayed in the
area. Her family was
there until Melan was 16, in fact. Even though she no longer lives
there, Melan says that this hood is home, even though it has changed.
"It's like your first love,"
Melan says of her hometown. "It feels like growing up in Oz."
She left The City when she found
herself complaining about changes.
Rewinding a bit, Melan shares
the story of her family getting evicted from her grandma's house in
Ingleside when she was 19.
She had wanted to move out on her own anyway, but wasn't sure how.
And so, as it turns out, this unfortunate event forced her to become an adult.
She's the middle kid of three,
with one older sister and one younger brother. Melan says that she
and her siblings are all
different, that they did their own things, and that
she is the only artist among them.
Her dad is a playwright and
her mom's a hard-core crafter. Melan says that she has always been creative,
that creativity and expression were fostered in their
home.
Her mom collected/hoarded
things, and Melan thinks that's where she got her own propensity
to pick things up off the
street. She feels like she
can "McGuyver" anything.
We end Part 1 with Melan
explaining that she's consistently cookie-decorating at her home in
the East Bay. At the time of our recording last December, she was
also making fake cookies out
of clay. She rattles off some
of the other projects she's currently working on, and ends by
proclaiming, "I have to have
a lot of space."
Follow Melan on Instagram
@melanmadethat.
Visit her website here.
Photography by Jeff
Hunt
We recorded this podcast in
Patricia's Green in Hayes Valley in December 2023.