Mission Mission

The great thing about Critical Mass in Sacramento is that with only 14 people on the ride, if you get a flat, the entire Mass will pull over and hang out while you patch it up.

The terrible thing about Critical Mass in Sacramento is there’s this dude who thinks he’s the leader. Gives a welcome speech (he actually says “Welcome to Critical Mass!”) where he explains how Critical Mass works, cautions you not to break any rules, gets all serious if you make a joke about throwing bricks at cars, and informs you in which direction he’s decided we’ll be starting off. And then he barks orders at everybody the whole time: “LIGHT!!” “JOIN US!!” “IT’S CRITICAL MASS; JOIN US!!” “LIGHT!!” Gag me!

Sacramento is beautiful though. It’s a nice place to bike.

Previously:

Critical Mass Halloween

Critical Mass Seattle

Critical Mass at Ocean Beach

Critical Mass Louisville

Says reader Marcus P.:

So we were rounding out a Jersey Shore themed bar crawl with a few slices and whole pizza at Katz pizza/bagels. A group came in, presumably from Double Dutch, didn’t seem to find what they were looking for, and left. One of them was a transvestite. We grabbed our pizza and headed out to find that same transvestite bleeding from her face with a group of 10 people or so attending to her. She was conscious and moving her head, but didn’t look too good.

The cops came and some little guy ran into the street yelling “I told you guys! I fucking told you guys!” at the cop car. The car stopped in the middle of the intersection and the driver got out and yelled at the little guy to get out of the way or go to jail, something to that effect.

I didn’t want to rubberneck or take photos or anything, but some onlookers across the street said that the transvestite had some words with a guy, who then pulled out a metal pipe and hit her in the head. The assailant took off in a car. The cops got a description (black hoodie) and sent a squad car after the suspect.

Sounds like a hate crime on a full moon.

UPDATE: Another incident right around the corner.

Does this work? I’ve tried and failed a few times, but these bros look pretty comfortable. What’s their secret?

Photo by Brolores Park.

Mission Street Food announced yesterday the next step in their great experiment’s evolution: They’re opening a restaurant of their own. And not only that, they want us all to invest! For the low, low price of just $500, you can tell your mom or your http://www.missionmission.org/2010/02/01/mission-street-food-going-full-time-seeking-investors/ friends that you’re an investor in the hottest new restaurant in San Francisco. Link.

Photo by snackfight.

Signs be damned, these sofas must be free. On Liberty near Valencia.

As Ron Perlman uttered in Fallout, “War. War never changes.” Accordingly, the fourth major theater of the San Francisco Food Wars stormed on today at Thirsty Bear. Herbs, cheeses, grains, and nuts fleshed out the theme: Yeast Affliction — that’s bread disease to you and me.

Sourdough was, as one might expect of an SF event, a competitive genre. Palo Alto’s Mayfield Bakery had a particularly wonderful sourdough and Jen Rosa took the gold for her Rosemary Sourdough — a well earned victory.

Your correspondents’ personal pick of the show was Wild Yeast‘s Semolina Sourdough with Fennel, Currants, and Pine Nuts. Seriously, that was some amazing shit.

And the enticingly named “Hurricane” (not pictured) totally deserved people’s choice: brown rice and seaweed! The seaweed was intense but with a slab of butter proved perfectly balanced. Your correspondents can’t wait for the recipes to be released.

The Fancy Boyz easily swept up the coveted Mission Mission best-dressed award. Their fermented Pain a l’Ancienne wasn’t half-bad neithers.

It wasn’t all buttery and fluffy, though. While Stable’s yard is large enough to allow for mingling, Thirsty Bear couldn’t really handle the volume. Any time your correspondents tried to stop and enjoy the bread, we were accidentally blocking someone or unintentionally in line for something. While the event was fun, we hope future battles retreat back to Stable.

Photography by Ashleigh Cole

Any of y’all go?

Pizza Zone (‘N’ Grill!) on Duboce and Valencia.

Look, I’m not going to pretend I know anything about street art. The closest I got to “tagging” was repeatedly drawing the Stüssy S all over my binder in 7th grade.

But I think it’s really tacky when businesses paint their signs in graffiti text. It reminds me of those arcade machines in the 90′s that would show you a tag-font “Stay In School” splash screen when they started up. Even then I was cynical enough to see through their ridiculous attempt to appeal to my “urban” side.

Sure, we’ve sung praises for the yodelin’ Japanese cowboy Toshio Hirano before, but I just found this video profile of him done by PRI that deserves some attention:

Toshio has a charisma and passion for music that is really sobering to all the cynical young musicians like myself. Here’s a guy who loved classic country music so much that he literally up and moved straight to the source. (Ok, so my love of burritos may have moved me from the east bay to San Francisco, but that’s not exactly the same thing.)

He’s no fool either, he’s well aware that there’s quite a bit of the novelty/freak show draw to his act. But hey, if that’s what it takes to get people to come out and see him doing what he loves, then he’s ok with that. Oh, and his between-song banter is hilarious… that’s no act. This man is funny.

Toshio will be playing tonight as part of his monthly residency at the Rite Spot Cafe on 17th and Folsom from about 9pm-12. Go get your two-step on.

I tried to tell Penelope Popsicle that these golden-Beretta-heeled kicks of hers are only almost as good as designer Iris Schieferstein’s golden-revolver-heeled Gun Hoofs, but Penelope retorts that whereas Schieferstein’s shoes are just art pieces, these babies you can actually buy at Shiekh Shoes right here in the Mission!! Awesome point!

“You had such an opportunity!  Why didn’t you go for it?”

“I dunno.  I guess I’m sad.”