Mission Mission

Dolores Park Movie Night is back in action, starting tomorrow night at 8pm. Link. (Thanks, Michelle)

Photo courtesy Lesley Speed’s “A World Ruled by Hilarity: Gender and Low Comedy in the Films of Amy Heckerling” at Senses of Cinema.

This is a picture I took of Jamie Stewart’s guitar, battered to death during one of Xiu Xiu‘s last performances at Bottom of the Hill. It was a great show, as I’m sure Saturday’s will be (even though Katie Eastburn isn’t in tow this time). This is Mission-relevant because I always love the walk home from Bottom of the Hill: deserted streets, crisp night air, fog pouring over Twin Peaks, etc.

Link to that “Boy Soprano” video in which Xiu Xiu are characters in a knockoff of Nintendo 64-style video games like Super Mario World and Gradius III.

Link to Xiu Xiu on MySpace.

MAPP for short. I learned it had two ‘p’s and fell in love with the thing on the same night. Free concerts and performance art all around the 24th Street Mission region this past Saturday night. The line-up changes so fast and so often that you just have to show up to find out what’s going on. Check out the project here.

Best dancing I found on Saturday was at Red Poppy – live Rumba band who went ahead and played beats from all over the place. I had to take off 3 layers and 2 scarves to keep dancing. I didn’t get to the neighborhood until 9 p.m. or so, and that’s my only complaint. Next MAPP, I’m there from beginning to end.

Fate keeps bringing the Heavy Metal Bike Shop and I together. Fate and the inevitable unexpected perils of riding a bike, however sturdy, in San Francisco. Monday night, for example, I got the call: “Hey, you should blog about the Heavy Metal Bike Shop. Don’t you love that place?” Yes, I do. I ride past Heavy Metal every day on my way to work, right after I pass the Post Office, wishing I had something fun to send out, and right before I pass Mitchell’s, wishing they had vegan ice cream. That same night, my housemate was kind enough to help me adjust the not-very-adjustable pieces of my tiny green Schwinn, which is the sort of bike where the bumper stickers stuck to it are almost all rubbed off. Tuesday morning, I hopped on my bike to find it transformed into a see-saw, tipping backwards and forwards as I tried to hold on with parts not meant for holding on until I finally reached Heavy Metal, that sanctuary of basic tools, about 5 miles into my daily ride. They let me use a wrench, chatted with me amiably about the inflatable water slide size and weight of my bike (both absurd: it’s like some sadistic exercise regimen for children), gave a little bike-seat-angle advice, and sent me on my way.

It was nice to step into this little bicycle trove again, which I first experienced on a beautiful sunny day, just before Hanukkah. There was no school that day, and I was gleefully anticipating an afternoon overflowing with a bike ride which I intended to loop along the Bay, to glide past the Golden Gate Bridge, to wind south from the northern tip of San Francisco to Market Street, to coast victoriously back into the Mission by nightfall or, who knows, to see the sunset out at Ocean Beach. So the moment came to leave the office where I work mornings and out I went for about a mile of cycling as planned, until a screw laying innocuously in the bike path punched into my back tire. You know the sound.

The first moment of fate.

I yanked the screw out of my tire and adjusted my plans for the day, walking to a spot nearby with a view of the Bay and its Bridge, and read for a few hours. I didn’t want to get stuck downtown during rush hour, when bikes are forbidden on BART, so I walked to the Embarcadero Station around 4 and stepped onto the first train headed towards the 24th Street/Mission Station. The first thing that greeted my eyes on that first train (2nd moment of fate) were bike handles I recognized. One of my good friends had fissioned under the pressure of art school finals, gone to get a haircut, and hopped on the train home 5 or so hours earlier than usual. So there were were, and she thought I should bring my bike to her boyfriend’s favorite bike shop, the one on her walk home from the BART Station, Heavy Metal. She was kind enough to walk with me even though her bike tires were intact.

Inside the bike shop I found friendly folks who trudged good-naturedly through the layers of intrigue surrounding my bike. It’s so small, so green, so heavy, so nostalgic and so impossible to find a new tube for. They found me an old tube instead, not the right size but one that fits, all dusted with whatever fills an unopened box after a few years. Now I need a Presta pump for one tire and a Schraeder for the other. My old tube had three distinct holes in it from that assiduous screw.

I spent a while there. I chatted with a man wearing an Elvis Presley necklace, I found some chocolate gelt on the counter and learned where to find vegan chocolate gelt. That day, I heeded fate and headed home on my pumped-up bike only $15 later. $15 plus BART fare.

Plug1 was talking about the “vertical earthquake” problem recently, and while it’s most apparent closer to downtown, the Mission gets its share of little tremors. The latest is a 50-foot luxury condo complex planned for the corner of 18th and Valencia. When the thing goes up, views of the above mural will be obstructed forever. Tomorrow is the final appeal. If you’d care to voice your opposition, aLittleDisplay’sBlog has all the deets. Link. (Via Curbed SF)

Photo by Kari Orvik (part of a series commemorating the threatened view).

On Sunday, the San Francisco Chronicle released their list of top 100 restaurants in the Bay Area, or as I like to call it “Top 100 Restaurants for People with Money”. This is what they had to say about Bar Bambino:

Owner Christopher Losa has created one of the coolest Italian restaurants in one of the most unlikely (read dicey) areas of the Mission District. It feels like New York’s East Village, but the nod to organic, sustainable and recycled products is very West Coast. [Link]

Is the Chronicle seriously that pretentious? Tartine Bakery is listed every year, but they never said it was in a bad neighborhood. And actually, they’ve never said that because it’s next to Delfina, which the Chronicle loves.

Maybe Stuff that White People Like should add the Chronicle Food Section to their list.

Medjool sticks out in the Mission like an oasis in the desert. Hip, but not filled with hipsters. Crowded and sweaty, and yet it manages not to smell like urine. It has a nice roof, but SF tends toward arctic extremes at night so enjoying the view requires one to be very brave or very drunk.

There was plenty of both of the above Saturday night, the publicized “international” music night. The place was filled with douchebags, and pretty soon it was apparent why. The type of music they consider international was just enough on the ethnic side to make the crowd feel adventurous and exotic, but just enough on the white American side to feel familiar and comforting.

It’s 1999 and Carlos Santana has just made his big return with an album finally tailored to the masses. He mixes his soulful Latin guitar style with white American pop vocals. Rob Thomas singing “Smooth” made us feel like we were a part of the browner crowd while giving us something to identify with. Likewise with Dave Matthews, Everlast and the racially ambiguous Eagle-Eye Cherry. However, normally we did not like to listen to this music in front of actual Latin people, because deep bouncy castle for sale down we realized they would expose us for the posers we were.

This is what Medjool’s “international” night is like. Except you are surrounded by people as white as, or whiter, than you, who are dancing badly to embarrassing music and reminding you with every second that this is exactly what you look like. It makes you want to leave before you are seen by anybody not white.

To worsen the white factor, 9 out of 10 dudes are douchebags of the frat boy or former frat boy variety. They are all dressed exactly the same, with exactly the same hair, and utilizing exactly the same dance moves. But the most characteristic quality of the frat boy douchebag is how he treats his woman. He alternately gropes her and ignores her. Up on the roof, there were several heaters set up. In general, the men congregated in circles around these while their women huddled in the cold outside the circle, suffering because they are wearing the sort of minimal clothing that their boyfriends require to show them off in.

What I do find comforting about the Medjool experience is that for two days afterward, when asked how Medjool was, I responded with some variation of, “Douchebaggery abounds” or, “Sooo many douchebags.” And everyone nodded enthusiastically–there was no doubt what could be meant by this answer.

Pressed for time, I only made it to the two Outer Mission stops on the 24th and Mission Art Walk. Neither was as fun as Cardburg.

First, Soap Gallery:

This was opening night for Pull Here To Get Everything You Want, an exhibition of new collages by Green Party vice presidential candidate Matt Gonzalez. The modest little arrangements of scraps appeal to the OCD in all of us, and as far as repurposing found junk into art, a lot of these were a lot better than a lot of the junk at Unmonumental, the ballyhooed found-junk-themed inaugural exhibition at New York’s new New Museum location (which, incidentally, closes in a couple days).

The central element of the opening was Gonzalez. Photographers swarmed, taking lots and lots of low-angle shots of him mingling with attendees. My parents noted that he’s going gray.

Soap Gallery provided goldfish crackers, pretzels, peanuts, M&Ms, wine, three kinds of imported beer, and live music.

Next, Queen’s Nails Annex:

Queen’s Nails Annex has a cool name, this cool picture of chairs, a cool logo on its website, and it’s like right next to Argus Lounge, which is cool.

Previously on Mission Mission: 24th and Mission Art Walk Snakes around All the Best Parts of the Mission.

Last night at the Attic, a dank, dark bar next to the 24th Street BART station, we ran into six different regulars who we know from Toronado, the best beer bar in the entire world (not an exaggeration or just a personal opinion). I discovered Toronado a week after I moved to the city, and spent all the money I never had there. My palate started off with Liberty Ale, then quickly progressed to Trappist ales (read an Oakland Tribune article about me and Roquefort 8 and 10 here), to double IPAs, triple IPAs, and finally bourbon-barrel barleywines.

After a few years of being one of those people, my palate crapped out and now all I ever enjoy is a Sierra Nevada or a nice cold can of Tecate.

Because of the above, and because I graduated from SFSU and got a 9-5, I don’t really show my face around Toronado anymore.

Apparently the regulars don’t go to Toronado either. What might the reason be? I hereby speculate that it’s the yuppies. Like a perfectly poignant South Park episode, 6:15pm on the dot, yuppies descend on Toronado. They cram the bar with their date rape shirts, and the bartenders get bitchy not because they are bitches, but because they get fed up with the yuppie shenanigans. Yuppies especially like to throw around big beer nerd names: “oh, I like the complex flavors of Racer X, but my regular standard is Pliny the Elder“.

The funny thing about the Attic is the beer selection sucks. Oh, they’ve got Racer 5 and Sierra Nevada and other boring things on tap. Their bottled beers are also so-so, so I normally opt for a Budweiser, although not my favorites of the bottled.

So while people have this love for Zeitgeist being “the Mission’s Toronado”, know that the family members of the best beer bar in the entire world opt for the dark claustrophobia of The Attic.

More Bars of the Mission.

Cardburg is a miniature cardboard city, temporarily installed at CELLspace. Visitors are invited to walk amongst the skyscrapers and highways, and even tunnel into a hulking cardboard mountain. Note the back-lit residential windows, cargo cranes straight out of the Port of Oakland, and the way corrugated cardboard stands in for corrugated metal on the rooftops of a small hillside favela. Opening night was fun, but closing night will be funner, as attendees get to participate in Cardburg’s destruction. See website for calendar of events, costume inspiration and more.

Link to Cardboard Institute of Technology.

Link to my Flickr photostream.