Mission Mission

I have mixed feelings about Nap’s 3 karaoke night, which takes place on Fridays and Saturdays.

"When's it my turn? Wouldn't I love; love to explore that world up above? Out of the sea; Wish I could be; Part of that world"

On the one hand, the bar has a refreshing clientele of alcoholic old-timers who aren’t too proud to high-five the oddly-dressed young folks who happen into the place. Rarely was there more than a 3-song wait before your time to shine. Also, the exceedingly jolly KJ has a kick-ass raspy, soulful croon.

No, really. How deep is it?

On the other hand, their book is rife with glaring song duplicates and some surprising omissions. No Huey Lewis And The News or Boyz II Men? Every Tom Jones song except for “What’s New Pussycat” and “It’s Not Unusual”? I can think of 20 Nirvana songs I’d want to sing before their only suggestion: “All Apologies”. I didn’t check if they had Sinatra’s “My Way”, but maybe that’s best left unknown. Furthermore, the bar had a baffling “no beer, just $7 cocktails” last call policy.

So what’s the best place for karaoke in the Mission? Good karaoke spots are a delicate balance of a good song book, stiff drinks, not too many intimidatingly talented regulars (e.g. the Mel-o-dee, El Cerrito), and not too popular so you can actually get some songs in.

My vote might have to go to Amnesia’s Tuesday Rock-Out! Karaoke with Glenny Kravitz. I went a couple of months ago and have never seen so much spontaneous broomstick-air-guitar in my life. Although, who knows if the lines are still short.

So you party a little too hard at Debaser and wake up in someone else’s bed, but UH-OH, you forgot that you have that early-morning meeting at Ritual with some venture capitalists who are ready to pump funding into your game-changing gumball machine idea.  While trackstanding at a stoplight, you realize your breath smells like Zeitgeist on porta-potty cleaning day and will only get worse once rinsed with espresso culled from an $11,000 coffee machine (or not).  What to do?

Luckily, your gumball machine game-changer also happens to be exactly what you need in this situation.  Synergy!

The Chewable Toothbrush

‘All in one’ disposable toothbrush and breath freshener.  No toothpaste or water required! For instant results simply place the soft brush in your mouth and chew (see diagrams).  Leaves your whole mouth feeling clean and fresh!  Great anytime after snacks or meals.  Ideal for holidays and travelling.  Not suitable for children under 6 yrs.  DO NOT SWALLOW.

Is anyone surprised to see that this comes from London?

Previously: Start Your Own Mission Empire for $60

Even if we assembled a think-tank supergroup of the most cynical Mission bloggers whose sole purpose would be to come up with the best Marina zingers that the world has ever seen, there’s no way we could have come up with anything more absurd than the real thing:

(via that up-and-coming blog BoingBoing, almost as big as Mission Mission)

Update: I feel like I owe this to the Pad. Here is their explanation (via James Fallows):

I’m only sorry the intention of this drive was unclear to you. Actually, our drive was a part of a bigger organized effort spear headed by the founder of JADE yoga mat, during the weekend of the annual San Francisco Yoga Journal Conference. JADE asked studio owners, teachers, students alike to give up their old or used mats so that the thousands of suffering people in Haiti may have somewhere softer the  ground to sleep.

So yeah, it’s a misunderstanding, but you gotta admit it’s a funny misunderstanding. Like that time my math professor wrote that equation “f=avt” on the board in a way that looked like “f=art”. The class had a giggle, he set the record straight, and got over it.

Poignant commentary or unfortunate misspelling?  If the latter, then this edges out our previous champion.  Get it while it’s fresh.

[available @  the 24th/Folsom market/check cashing/almost-landord]

Photo by Marijke J.

I was like, “Dang, who’s Jonathan Solo?” So I tried this thing Google (after being hipped to it by a commercial during Super Bowl XLIV yesterday) and found out he’s a San Francisco-based artist whose stuff is waaay creepy! See for yourself!

Photo by Marijke J.

These really work for me, people. Don’t you just want to dive right in?

Photos by Marijke J.

Check out Mission native Michelle Nguyen’s blog, Meng;Inspired. She writes and draws a sweet autobiographical comic strip. That’s her on the left.

As you heard last week, Mission Street Food is working on moving out of their oh-so-classy classy Lung Shan digs and becoming a full-time non-profit restaurant. Their initial $500 investment option was a bit steep for most folks, so they moved over to the kickstarter.com model which allows you to donate arbitrary amounts of money anywhere from $1 and up.

If you donate $50 and up you get a gift certificate to the restaurant for that amount, so it practically pays for itself if you were planning on going there anyway. More details on their blog or just hop over to kickstarter page here. They have to reach their $10,000 goal before May 5th for the funding to happen.

If you aren’t aware of what Mission Street Food is all about, this documentary covers it pretty well.

Reader Jesse W. had his bike stolen. Anyone seen it? It’s a really unique Schwinn cruiser that seems pretty hard to miss:

Last night (Thursday, 2/4), my super-fly Schwinn cruiser was stolen, along with three other bikes, from my garage at 15th and Guerrero.  It’s super recognizable, especially if the dumb-ass punk(s) who stole it neglect to unstring the LED christmas lights from the frame.

If you have any leads post a comment or email us (missionmissionmission at gmail dot com) and we’ll make sure Jesse hears about it.

Before the inevitable, “WTF dude, are you gonna post every stolen bike on here? People get their bikes stolen every day! Try Craigslist and next time triple-lock your bike to the radiator in your bedroom.” No, we don’t post every stolen bike on here, but we do post the ones from readers in the Mission who ask us nicely and we have been able to help recover stolen things before. So if you can spare the 2 seconds out of your busy weekend schedule to glance at this bike, then cool. If not, then no big deal.