MAC SF just published a piece called A Tale of Two Commercial Corridors, which laments the divide between Mission and Valencia:
Valencia has become iconic for its high-end eclecticism, it’s hipster saturated streets and pricey restaurants. The demographic on the street is young, hyper-educated and affluent. Mission Street is, well, Mission Street, full of brown faces, families with kids, recent immigrants, grime, and all kinds of cheap apparel stores up and down the corridor. Two streets that sit side by side running parallel through the Mission District, only a block away but worlds apart.
It goes on compare the amount of attention paid to the New Mission Theater project to the amount of attention paid to American Apparel.
To me, this divide is thee crux of this notion we call “The Mission.” MAC can highlight what they need to in order to effect the political changes they’re after, but my question is this: Would the Mission be the Mission without this divide?
I wasn’t here 10 years ago or 15 years ago or 40 years ago, but I’m here now and I love the Mission now. And I love it for all of the things that it is, now. I love that these two streets are “only a block away but worlds apart.” And on some level, I think we all do. Because it’s the human experience in microcosm? Something about the duality of man?
Here’s a thought: What if it’s this very divide that makes the Mission so unique?
Now I’m off to City Hall (where, incidentally, I’m gonna try this). If any news happens, I’ll be in touch.
Photos by juicyrai.
Awesome, I was hoping you’d be going. I bet that’s gonna be a hoot. Do tell us about what you saw.
That divide has been there since I moved to 19h & San Carlos back in ’81. Then it was lesbians, artists, leftists, and bike messengers — maybe a more low rent bohemia — but the divide was there and no less a defining. You’re right. That is totally central to what it is we love about this place.
The divide does make the Mission unique, in that off the top of my head I cannot think of of two streets that are so close, yet so different.
But this is not what I necessarily love about the Mission. To answer your question, the Mission would be the Mission without the divide.
I was born and raised in the Mission, and for those of us who grew up here, I would argue that Valencia street has little to nothing to do with how we see the Mission’s uniqueness.
I am not speaking for everyone who grew up here, just with the residents I grew up with.