Mission Mission

Travis Jensen has detailed a fairly epic crack-bust that occurred this past weekend in front of a dollar store on Mission and 17th. Without spoiling the entire story, there was a fairly interesting tidbit about Mission St. crack sales thrown in the mix:

We later found out that this particular dollar store is notorious for crack sales. Apparently, it’s safer to do the exchange inside the store than out on the street. In this particular case, however, the buyer turned out to be an undercover cop. Whoops.

I had always wondered how so many dollar stores could stay in business…

(Credit SFist)

This building on 23rd and Capp is tagged constantly. Even so, should the city be paying for this service (especially when they don’t claim to offer it)?

UPDATE: A number of commenters have pointed out that the city will warn a property owner that they are required to paint over graffiti or else the DPW will do it and send them a bill.  However in this case, the owner (presumably) has been spotted painting over the graffiti a number of times but the building is just tagged again within a day or two.  It sounds like a way to scam property owners out of money.

"Better than pushing dirt."

Found on 24th and Folson:

As a number of readers have pointed out, apparently Mission Street Carts / Bicycle Food is now controversial.  Eater SF is home to a new perspective against our district’s delicious eats: “I’m not against street food, I’m just anti-novelty, anti-trend, and 100% pro delicious, cheap, convenient street food–real street food.”  Hilariously enough, Bike Basket Pies called the author out in the comments insinuating that he bashed the food without even trying it.  Smooth.

Agree or disagree with the piece, the comment thread is certainly interesting and ridiculous.  (link)

An anonymous tipster pointed us towards ShazamSF’s Twitter Feed, who is currently livetweeting about HBO filming a segment for “Real Sex” in a Mission district building.

From Wikipedia:

Real Sex explores human sexuality, from the latest sexual fads to casual sex festivals and home production of pornographic movies. The show typically explores three to four topics each episode. Segments are separated by street interviews with random people, relating to the episode’s topics. (link)

With Kink at the Knockout and Box Dog Bikes recently being propositioned as a set, it sounds like the Mission might be turning into the porn hotbed of SF.

This past weekend, Mission High School held a “green prom,” in which students powered the DJ equipment using a bicycle pedal powered stage.  You can see the full photo gallery on Rock The Bike’s flickr account.

The Webby-Award Winning web-journalism startup, Mission Loc@l, has “hired” a “fashion writer” for this fall, according to a source.  The only details that we have is that it a female student straight out of undergrad, which is apparently rare for Berkeley J-School.  There was some speculation that this might have been a demographic hire, but we cannot confirm that at this time.

Our source adds: “The mission needs a fashion blogger like it needs a google map of bike stores“

There is a new neighborhood blog in town, this on hailing from the rough streets of the Tenderloin.  Meet Tenderblog.

“Yeah, it’s dirty. It’s grungy. There are people shooting up/ defecating/ begging/ sleeping accross the sidewalk/ not showering in plain daylight. There are hookers out in the open. There are dealers on the corners.”

Hell yes.  The Tenderloin is nothing but endless fodder for the chaos.  I cannot wait to see how this blog develops.

There has been some well documented hate directed towards Valencia St. fixie start-up Mission Bicycle, but this seems a little over the top.  Was it random or targeted?  We will only be able to speculate…

Mr. Pickles moments after his return.

Mr. Pickle was just anonymously dropped off across front of Shotwell’s on 20th and Treat.  According to Mama Pickle, the thief called this afternoon claiming to have “felt bad” about taking Mr. Pickle and offered to return him in the night.  She reported that she believed it was a joke but still asked that “he drop him off before close so I could bring him inside.”  She stressed that if he was returned, she would not involve the police.  Soon after, she received another call that he was dropped off around the corner, where she found him in a box.

Mama said that the thief even called again to verify that Mama and Mr. were reunited.

Mama started to take off the red bandana, an addition from the Pickle hostage taker, as I was leaving.  After some discussion, she agreed to leave it on him as a stylish-reminder of this part of Mr. Pickle’s history.