Mission Mission

Plug1 was prowling Valencia Street last night and scored a Girafa sighting. Employing state-of-the-art night vision optics, he captured the beast. Link.

Grilling starts at 1:30pm sharp.

I’m waiting at a red light this morning, and across the way I see a woman backing toward this chain-link fence. She stands for a moment, then surreptitiously releases the contents of her plastic bag onto the sidewalk.

Body language is 70% East Berlin spy hunter, 30% Mission District little old lady. She crumples up her bag and promptly vacates the scene.

At Mission Street Food last night I was too busy savoring the fucking triple-awesome nachos to even think about taking any pictures of anything.

Until I was waiting in line for the restroom. What is this lucky charm?

P.S. Karen is positively heroic in the Chronicle writeup, amirite?

From Mission Station Newsletter

By Captain Stephen Tacchini

Over the past couple of weeks, there have been several street robberies committed in the Mission District. Through prompt response, quick thinking and organized efforts, officers from Mission Station made several outstanding arrests of persons responsible for those crimes. I am confident those arrests will significantly impact the incidence of future robberies. Often one or two suspects for any crime may be responsible for a significant amount of crimes in a geographical area and their capture greatly reduces the incidence of that crime.

One recent case in particular stands out. A robbery of two men on a street occurred where the suspects pointed a shotgun at the victims and demanded their valuables. The suspects ran away and were observed by the victims to be on a specific block when officers arrived on the scene. Alert officers secured the area and began a slow, methodical search of the block. One officer noticed a woman looking out of her front window and his instincts told him there was something wrong with the way she was looking at him. He went up the stairs of her house and knocked on the door and calmly and quietly asked her if everything was alright. She responded by shaking her head and motioning towards the back of her house. The officers acted quickly and deliberately and entered the house, finding one of the robbery suspects sitting in the living room. He was taken into custody without incident, and it was learned later, he had warned the woman not to say anything to the Police when they knocked on her door. In this case the suspect could easily have been overlooked and escaped, except for the alert and perceptive officer who followed his instincts and pursued things just a little further. Even more important was the courage of the woman to look out the window, make eye contact with the officer and through non-verbal means, convey a sense of fear and urgency.

This is just one example of the excellent work done on a daily basis by the officers of Mission Station. I am very proud of the work they do and you should be too!

[Email Stephen_Tacchini(at)sfgov(dot)org to subscribe.]

Photo by juicyrai.

Update: I really should have titled this Skateboarder 1, Mazda Miata 0. Mission Mission apologizes for the oversight.

My best concert experience ever was Andre Williams at the Hemlock, April 2006.

It began with Mission hero Johnny Davis saving our asses: My girlfriend at the time had left her ID in her other fucking yoga pants and was being turned away — Andre within minutes of taking the stage — when suddenly Johnny swooped in and vouched for us. Then we all drank a bunch of Jim Beam and Pliny the Elder and ducked into the crowd. (Thanks again, Johnny!)

Andre owned the world that night. A septuagenarian with the energy of a teenage punk rocker, he hops around on the stage, shouts, bellows, emotes. There’s this song he does called The Dealer, the Peeler and the Stealer, and it floored everybody. Driving rhythm, shout-along chorus. We were in a little black box jumping up and down as Andre jumped up and down, our brains replaced with solid soul swagger.

Andre plays Slim’s tonight as part of Noise Pop. It’s less intimate a room, but I don’t imagine he won’t make it work just as well. And they definitely have Jim Beam and Big Daddy.

Photo by Dena Flows.

Bonus: The Noise Pop Film Festival screens a feature-length documentary about Andre next Friday at ATA.

That’s right! Studies have been undertaken, and plans have been drawn up. So what’s the holdup?

Burrito Justice has the story here.

Related:

BART Shit

BART Swing

BART Boner

Healthy Development Measurement Tool provides sets of metrics, demographic and otherwise, from which we can learn various things about neighborhoods in the city.

Here are some things we learned about the Mission: Proportion of households with 1/4-mile access to a community garden and density of take-out alcohol outlets are both better than twice the citywide averages. Win!

More Mission metrics are here.

[via MAC SF]

Mission Loc@l this week took a look at the unique culture that is the intersection of 16th and Mission and came up with an engaging feature that begins thusly:

At the intersection of 16th and Mission streets on a busy midday afternoon, three people shared a small bottle of clear liquor, draining every last drop. The trio decided against concealing their bottle in a brown paper bag, despite open-container laws.

Link.