Suburbia 1967. Eleven-year-old Susan Bradley has only one thing on her mind, and it's not schoolwork. It's Mike Nesmith of The Monkees, the popular pop group made famous in the television sitcom of the same name. Susan, with "boyfriend" Nesmith, lives in a daydream, a sixties riot of psychedelic colors and goofy, soft-focus, teenage-girl love scenes. Her well-meaning parents try to snap her back to reality, but it takes an informative copy of Teen Life to finally open Susan's eyes.

Marvin, a young aspiring writer from New York, moves to California to write a novel. He ends up rooming with a chaotic, bohemian musician named Jay. Marvin finds himself inexorably drawn into the vibrant youth culture of San Francisco's Mission District as both Jay and himself watch their worlds disintegrate. They discover that each has a lot to learn from the other. Mission is a coming-of-age story casting a spotlight on a place and time, moments before artistic aspiring types yielded the Mission to the dotcom entrepreneurs.