Mission Mission

How come it never occurs to me (or seemingly any of my friends) to have a picnic up on Twin Peaks? I end up up there a lot, but it’s always when I find myself in somebody’s car with some time to kill and we all go, “Twin Peaks!” And then we drive up there, take in the view, run to the top, snap an Instagram and then leave.

Why not make it a destination?? (Like Elizabeth here did.)

Longtime local club-owner JWZ on current club fashion:

The thing that always amazes me when I check out younger and/or more mainstream dance parties is how fantastically uniform and horrible the male dress code is. The girls tend to be in your usual timeless slutty-club-wear: a short glittery dress, or maybe a cut-off t-shirt with hotpants and fuzzy leg-warmers. Not the apex of creativity, but at least it looks intentional. Some thought went into it. But the guys all wear exactly the same thing: a mesh basketball wife-beater, a backward baseball cap, and blue jeans. All of them!

[...]

“Hipsters” may make some comical choices, but at least they’re trying. [link]

Yeah, man. Just tryyy!

[Totally unrelated photo by Helen]

Mission Local reports:

A citizen tried to dispose of an antique grenade at the Mission Police Station on Valencia and 17th. The police called explosive experts to analyze it, and as a precautionary measure have evacuated Taqueria El Toro and the Mission Police Station. [link]

Hopefully the bomb squad robot doesn’t drop the grenade and drive RIGHT OVER IT like last time. (Definitely watch the video if you missed it before.)

Today’s Burger Special is the Tortilla Soup Cheeseburger with fries and a PBR or soda for only $12

— The Sycamore (@TheSycamoreSF) April 26, 2012

Soup-themed burger! Imagine the possibilities!

One of them is wearing (a piece of) Andy’s Jolly Ranchers and Robitussin glasses!

[via Jess]

You can’t have one without the other — it just wouldn’t be the Mission.

[via Pen Pop]

It’s an Instagram, so these colors are likely exaggerated, but it’s still pretty.

[via nickbilton]

There’s always a lot of talk around these parts about what constitutes “the REAL San Francisco,” right? Well, anadromy, one of our new favorite bloggers, has a humdinger of an answer:

Last year, I met a girl online. Turned out she had just moved here from Beijing. She kept saying she wanted to see, “Authentic San Francisco.” It would be impossible for me to phonetically spell out the bizarre and borderline incomprehensible grandeur of her accent, but suffice it to say that it took several, “Excuse me’s?” before I understood her meaning.  When I got it, I decided to try to give her what she wanted. We climbed into the beater pickup truck I was driving then and I just started driving. I didn’t know where the hell to go to find “Authentic San Francisco.” But I gave it my best shot. We went up Portola so she could see the view, then cruised down through the Castro and into the Mission. To my shock, there was a parking space right outside of the Latin American Club. Then, to my even greater shock, there was an open booth in the window. So I sat the girl from Beijing down in the booth and went to get us some drinks. When I came back, there were two young Mission kids sitting in the booth with her. I sat down and they said they had been sitting there originally, but that we were more than welcome to join them. About 30 seconds later, they more or less started having sex. I’m only exaggerating a little bit. Zippers were unzipped. Hands were down pants and up shirts. The guy’s knees kept banging into mine, too.

Read on.

[Photo by LLL]

The Daily Mail published a story about how Ke$ha tweeted this picture of herself peeing on the street this morning, and they included some quotes from previous interviews with the popstar:

‘I’m just a ballsy motherf****r. I’m not afraid of pushing boundaries.

‘That’s what you have to do to become an icon.’ [link]

Yeah well I think we here in the Mission know who the real icon is.

[Photo by Ke$ha] [Thanks, WBTC!]

This is a comment by reader Lyle Lanley, left on yesterday’s post about gentrification. Enjoy!

I’ve been here since 1993. Nope, doesn’t make me an OG, but it’s a bit of time. Flew in, sight unseen. Stayed in an acquaintance’s basement for a few days, then pored over the Bay Guardian looking for an apartment (there was not only no craigslist, there was barely an internet). I found a room in a Guerrero two-bedroom for $330 a month.

This was when New Dawn occupied the Tokyo Go Go space, Elixir was part of the Jack’s empire, Casanova was an old Vietnam vet daytime bar, and a rice and bean burrito at La Cumbre cost $1.25. Laughing Hyenas at Kilowatt!

You’re probably expecting some things-were-better-then nostalgia to follow, but let me disappoint you. Things are better now. There are better drinks now. There is better coffee. There are breakfast/brunch choices that I wish we had (Boogaloo’s, New Dawn, and crepes used to be the only game in the neighborhood). The food is unbelievable. The only downside to the Mission today is that everything’s a little pricier than I want it to be, but that’s always true, isn’t it? No one has ever thought, “I live in a Golden Age of Prices.”

Something that I have heard weekly, daily, hourly in the past 20 years is howls about the gentrification that has just *ruined* the place. Yes, the folks worried about the Google buses on Guerrero, are not the first to worry about “losing the character of the neighborhood.” People bemoaned gentrification in the mid-90’s, they *really* got up in arms during the dot-com boom soon thereafter, and now, during the app boom (or whatever is driving the current rent increases), we’re hearing the cries again. But I’m not worried about it. Why? Two reasons. First, I don’t consider displacement of *businesses* gentrification. I’ll take a nice restaurant over a grimy donut shop any day, and there’s nothing crucial to the character of the neighborhood about having an “envio dinero” bulletproof plexi kiosk in every single storefront – every third one will be fine. So the economic development of the Mission – from artisanal cheese, to handmade clothing, to custom bikes, to fancy restaurants – doesn’t count as gentrification in my eyes. If it is, well, it’s the good kind.

What counts to me as gentrification is displacement of *people*. And that happens far, far less than the town criers suggest it does. It turns out that Prop. 13 (which caps property taxes) and rent control have done a spectacular job of keeping people in place. The family to the right of my apartment, the woman to my left, two entire buildings across the street – all are full of people who have been there for decades. If they’re renting, they’re renting at a rate they’ve been paying for years, and they can’t be evicted (yes, there are owner move-ins and Ellis Acts, but they are the rare exception, not the rule). If they own, they’re paying a few hundred a year in property tax, as opposed to some folks down the street paying over $10,000.

We have serious structural incentives in place to keep people in place, and they are working. So the folks out back who slaughter a couple chickens on the landing on special occasions aren’t going anywhere. The neighbors with thirty people in the backyard shouting at every punch thrown on the pay-per-view boxing match are settled in. The guy across the street who comes out of his family’s house drunk at 9 a.m., accosting passersby with, “I been here 40 years, born and raised,” will probably do that for another 40, unless his liver gives.

Are there problems with rent increases? Absolutely. Vacancy decontrol lets the apartments that become available shoot up to crazy levels. It’s going to be very difficult for people to come *into* the neighborhood unless they’re rich. I think I saw a $2700 one-bedroom down the street, and no kid fresh from college can rent that out and start working an entry-level job. But that’s true on the Lower East Side, too. The most desirable places are always going to be the most expensive. So there are barriers to entry, but nobody is being “pushed out.”

Demographically, the Mission today looks an awful lot like what it looked like 20 years ago. Economically, Farina employs a lot more people than the dormant bakery there before it (what was that place called?). It may be better than ever here.

Thanks, Lyle!