Mission Mission

As predicted, the Lou Reed posters on the Valencia Street Art Wall did not last long. But, as Burrito Justice points out, Lou’s arms still look pretty good. Link.

Or:

See the posters undefaced.

Came across the following tweet by katherine: “magic curry kart inaugural night – linda at 19th. future mission hotspot. $5 recession red & green curry”(Link). We contacted her friend NatalieHG who provided us with clarification and the above photo:

Debut last night- Brian has 2 woks & gas burners on a burningman cart. Green or red, chicken or tofu, cooked to order! @deadend of linda st. [...] last night was debut/trial.

Click photo to view photo page. We trust katherine or Natalie or somebody will be in touch if and when the kart schedules another appearance. Thanks, all!

Stephen Gose wrote in to share his photo of the toilet paper in the bathroom at Mission Street Food, calling it both “really great” and “cute.” Link. Thanks, Stephen!

Previously:

What Would You Do With 5000 Empty Toilet Paper Tubes?

When Self Edge took over the old Leather Tongue Video space a few years back, I thought to myself, “Oh great, some high-end Marina douche boutique has displaced a beloved Mission landmark.” Over beers the other night, Kiya Babzani, owner-operator of the place, informed me that apparently this was a pretty common misconception in the early days, as Self Edge was repeatedly vandalized and he and his employees were shouted at, muttered at and spat at.

Mind you I’d never patronized Leather Tongue, because who the fuck has even seen a VCR in the last 12 years? But it looked pretty punk rock and I guess I liked knowing it was there.

Now it’s gone, but its iconic signage lives on on the wall at Bender’s Bar.  We grabbed a table right under it and talked Self Edge. At 18, Kiya (bespectacled in above photo) got obsessed with denim, indigo and Japan’s obsession with old American stuff, and a little over a decade later he found himself ready to open the only store in the country specializing in nothing but Japanese reproductions of vintage American garments. He opened it in his favorite neighborhood, where he’d been living since age 20, and it was a success from the start. Despite static from neighborhood haters, there was a global community of aficionados ready to jetset their way to the Mission to browse the wares of such a discerning specialty shop.

In fact, as seems to be customary, upon arriving at Bender’s, Kiya ran into several people he knew, and among them were a pair of travellers from London called Jon and Angi that had been by the shop earlier in the day. They’re newlyweds on an epic journey around the world, and though they had but a couple days in San Francisco, they spent two full hours at Self Edge. Jon said that of all the retail shops in all the cities they’ll visit on their year-and-a-half-long intercontinental tour, Kiya’s tops the list, by a longshot. He had a boatload of jeans shipped back to England.

Denim obsession is a fascinating thing. Kiya for instance wears the same pair of jeans every day for six months, then retires them forever and moves onto the next. He buys jeans that don’t fit him, and never will, solely because of their artistic merit. He knows all about dyes and stitches and can explain exactly why my Levi’s have holes in certain places and not others.

Some people nerd out over vinyl or bourbon or bike parts or comics. Others lose their minds over jeans.

Kiya and his fellow obsessives trade news and knowledge on a website called Superfuture, a lively community with forums devoted to travel and shopping – and denim in particular. People live their lives on this thing, keeping track of new innovations, new endeavors and new collaborations. Self Edge collaborates with other organizations and manufacturers and designers on a regular basis. We mentioned their most recent one last week, and next on the horizon is a jean even more certain to blow minds on the forums.

There’s this user called ringring, respected above most others for his comprehensive knowledge of denim and textiles and the whole history of fashion. Nobody knows who he is or what he does for a living. Nobody, that is, except Kiya. They’d been in touch since ringring made a clandestine early morning visit to the shop a while back, and at some point Kiya managed to convince him to collaborate on a jean. Kiya says the forthcoming single-stitched SEXTXRR10 will not be a standard five-pocket jean. This may mean absolutely nil to the layman, but it’s bound to be big news on Superfuture. And when the release date arrives, people will be lined up around the block, and crashing the Self Edge website’s servers.

But does all of that mean Self Edge isn’t a “Mission business”? The shit’s expensive, but that’s because it’s the shit. Like with Ritual‘s coffee or HMS Beekeeper‘s honey, buyers pay a premium for premium goodness. Moreover, this is a group of people from the neighborhood using the internet to forge meaningful, productive, real-life relationships with people within our little bubble and people well beyond it, and that’s surely something to be celebrated.

This weekend, it all comes together. Self Edge and Superfuture host their annual SuperParty at the shop tonight, sponsored by Fernet, with giveaways from the most prominent garment companies, and it’s sure to draw hundreds and hundreds of partiers from the Mission and around the world. Sunday, the party continues at Bender’s, Kiya’s (and many a Missionite’s) bar of choice, where beer nerds can nerd out on a special barrel-aged brew by Russian River Brewing Company. A seven-ounce pour of Consecration may cost $8, but c’mon, it’s the shit!

Photos by Sidney Lo, Nicole Lee and Andrew Ng. Click photos to view photo page.

Previously in “Fashion”:

Vote For True Love

Remembering Ben Davis

Lou Reed & Supreme

American Apparel Controversy Comes to an End

Marc Jacobs on Change

Fashionable Footwear in the Mission

Fanny Packs All Over the World

Audrey from Awww Damn submitted this design to Threadless, and I hereby hope it makes it through the voting process and becomes a real live t-shirt. Vote here.

Previously:

Ohlone Chiefs Shirt

Best Sandwich in the Mission?

The Mission is getting a new skatepark, under the freeway, right next to Zeitgeist, and tonight you can help design it. Click flyer to enlarge it.

[via West Gate of Babylon]

Reader Mel wrote in with a message for anyone using recreation programs at neighborhood parks:

Lay offs are in progress.  Program cuts are likely.  There is a hearing tonight (another on March 11th) to discuss the budget and cuts to parks and rec.  If anyone has time to go to the hearings and speak out in support of these programs and the people who run them – the details of the meeting are in the e-mails below [...]

Emails after the jump:

(more…)

I’ve been trying to write a thing about The Limousines and their song “Very Busy People” for daaays, but just haven’t been able to get it together.

See, last week I came across a syntheticpubes post featuring the song and the following commentary: “oh hey I found the Tumblr anthem.” (Link.) The song talks about playing video games, eating candy, drinking, making mix tapes, Photoshopping pictures of yourself, watching pixelated porn, watching Donnie Darko over and over, and downloading a lot of illegal music. And then the epic chorus goes:

We are… Very Busy People!!

Anyway, every time I sit down and try to put two sentences together on this thing, I end up over on Twitter, or on my blog, or buried in Google Reader, or watching Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on Hulu, or catching up on emails I should’ve responded to weeks ago, or I download the entire Hot Chip catalog and have myself a little listening party (during which I couldn’t possibly try to write – must concentrate on the music, and read tweets). Or, I get up to play ping pong or foosball, or tinker with my bike, or eat a meatloaf sandwich or a bag of 4505 Meats Chicharrones, or a pack of Haribo Goldbären, or a wedge of goat gouda. And after any of those activities, I’ve got to go wash my hands, and on my way back from that maybe I make a phone call or get thirsty.

I’m a very busy person.

And the Limousines are too, but I managed to get them on the phone the other day. They met online a while back and started making music together way before the met in real life. But they finally got together, and they started playing shows and building up a fan base. And though they’re still into reading Perez Hilton, and though they acknowledge the power of Twitter to somehow maybe bolster the creative process (John Mayer’s bowel movement tweets notwithstanding), they managed to ignore their Xbox and focus for long enough to write and record what just may prove to be their generation’s “My Generation.” Or at the very least, the Tumblr anthem.

They promise 2009 will be their year, and though my judgment here is colored by my own very busy lifestyle, I see zero reason why it shouldn’t be.

The Limousines open for Har Mar Superstar tonight at Rickshaw Stop, 7pm. The show is all ages and admission is $12.

CBS5 reports that since Mayor Newsom was so pleased with last year’s Sunday Streets events, they will return in 2009, expanded to include the Mission. This means streets closed to traffic for the benefit of pedestrians and cyclists, with activities, entertainment and other community-oriented stuff all along the way. Link.

Yesterday I managed to snag a seat on a crowded BART train, getting on at the 24th street station, delighted to have a few minutes to read.  My current book is West of Kabul, East of New York, the 2008 “San Francisco Reads” pick which may as well be called “Lael Reads” because I have yet to see another person doing their mandatory civic duty.  Surely if we all at least skimmed this book our BART and bus rides would be filled with scintillating conversations and good-natured ribbing of the main characters. However, my dreams of constantly striking up heated debates with mysterious and articulate literary strangers hasn’t quite panned out, no matter how visible I make the cover of the book.

So anyway, I sat down and began to read.  It is at this point that my seatmate, a girl in her twenties, begins to complain to her friend sitting in front of her.

“So, I’ve begun noticing that the same kinds of people ALWAYS sit next to me! I mean what is it about me that attracts them?”

She then proceeded to turn and look at me. Then she turned back to her friend.

“It’s always these old Asian women, with lots of shopping bags.”

I am neither old nor Asian, and I carried exactly zero shopping bags.

Girl: “I just wish that once, some really hot guy would sit next to me and start talking to me.”

She then looked over at me again, this time in disgust.

I looked back.  I sensed in her a kindred spirit, someone else who wanted to connect with a stranger. I thought about sharing my book approach with her, but there are only so many hot guys in our city, and even fewer who read, and I deemed this secret strategy too precious to be shared. So I kept silent, knowing she would never know just how alike we were, and that old Asian ladies sit next to me on BART all the time too.