Mission Mission

If only everybody in town were as cute as these two.

Photo by carinabot.

No matter where you live, work, walk, or ride throughout the City, you must have noticed the recent installations of  many more bicycle parking racks on sidewalks everywhere.  The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has made significant progress working with the SFMTA to make it much easier to request bike racks for specific sidewalk locations that you may particularly notice need more bike parking. 

While it’s FANTASTIC to see such progressive municipal cooperation in the name of expanding bicycle safety and ridership, am I the only one who’s getting tired of the utilitarian standard grey bike rack design?  Don’t get me wrong; they are clearly sleek, strong, and functional but I feel that a jazzier design would not only help further excite the population about cycling, but would also look way cooler! 

A recent trip up North to visit our Canadian neighbors in Vancouver presented a colorful and stylish alternative.  I walked up and down city streets for two days and could not even find two bicycle racks that looked alike!  Perhaps some criticism can be leveled at the apparent flimsiness of those triangles, but no doubt San Francisco’s intelligent creative artistic community can come up with some aesthetically pleasing marriage of form and function. 

H&R Block Bike Racks

Also, to the business-minded folks out there:  countless potential branding opportunities! 

More examples of bicycle rack awesomeness (and a locked up lawnmower) after the jump . . . 

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Looks like a lil’ ol’ 3.5.
Monday, June 28, 2010 at 07:47:04 AM at epicenter.
Found here.

Somebody totally bussed a pigeon along with their unfinished tortilla chips, and then the pigeon’s mate came over and was like, “What are you doing in there? Let’s get out of here.” The other one shrugged and was all, “I been bussed.”

And then that dude at the table goes, “Look at that cool guy taking pictures of pigeons.”

Previously:

NY Pigeons vs. SF Pigeons

Bar Feeding Pigeons

Pigeon Tragedy

Yikes. There are enough parking worries in this city without getting any pesky gremlins involved.

Watch your backs!

Photo by Steve Rhodes.

The crowd at The Phoenix was energized. US lost in the end, much to the dismay of most. We had to wait till two people left to get in, max capacity and all. About 45 people watched from the street.

Choice quotes:

“Yeah, well we have nukes and they don’t.”

“Fuck Ghana-rrhea!”

Not really making me want to align myself with the US fans.

Either way I went home to listen to the Yankees game.

Our very own Cranky Old Mission Guy is jumping on the post-random-crap-you-see-around-The-Mission-on-Flickr-as-if-the-fact-that-it’s-in-The-Mission-means-that-it-deserves-a-space-on-the-internet bandwagon.

He’s getting some neat stuff. Unfortunately he is reserving all the rights, so I don’t want to embed them here, knowing how cranky he gets. I’ll describe a few choice pics, though.

• This one is a sign that instructs a passerby on where the restroom isn’t. As well as the classic 3 person cleanup.

• This one shows the lengths that people go to in our crime-ridden neighborhood to protect their most cherished belongings.

• This one ruins your childhood best friend. It’s been too long, you stuttering soul.

• Finally, this one shows someone experimenting projecting negative energy in a variety of ways.

The Tenderloin Geographic Society hips us all to one of the highlights of SF Pride:

The It’s-It cart. Sometimes it’s closer to UN Plaza, sometimes closer to the Bill Graham.  They usually sell t-shirts.

So, I’m out of town this weekend. Somebody want to pick me up a shirt? Adult small. I’ll owe you some It’s-Its.

Photo by Steve Rhodes.

Wesam Nassar, my pal and producing partner, put together a short interview with Dave Eggers about Abdulrahman Zeitoun and his family, the subject of his most recent book.

It is an excellent book, by the way. On the one hand Eggers tells the amazing true story of a man choosing to stay in New Orleans during Katrina. On the other hand he illustrates the experience of being an immigrant Syrian Muslim in Bush’s US. And though those both seem like themes that would dominate any story, in the end what I was most left with is the strength of the Zetioun family (here and around the world), and their determination to hold together through anything, without compromising their values or beliefs.

(Sorry, was that too serious for MM? I’ll post some more pictures of garbage on the sidewalk soon enough)

Check it out. This band is called 0th, which is pronounced “Zeroth.” And as if that (or the above band photo) weren’t reason enough to go see them tonight at 8:30 at Southern Exposure, tonight’s performance has an extra special ingredient. Part of the band will be here in San Francisco, and part of the band will be in New York, and they will perform together via Skype or something!! How fucking rad is that!?

AND, I think one member of the band is MNDR, that girl in that rad Mark Ronson video with Q-Tip.