Mission Mission

Reader Beth sent in this delightful video of my two favorite fried potato dipping condiments settling the score on the Dolores Park playground today. Never has there been a more exciting food war!

The closeup on the ranch bottle at the end of the clip reveals that it’s probably part of Hidden Valley Ranch’s quest to become the “new ketchup,” but whatever, this totally made my day. In fact, I think I’m going to head over to Bender’s right now and eat some tots with ketchup and ranch dressing.

Our pal Suckin’ Dick Next To Me spotted this cleverly doctored sign on a Muni door. Albeit it’s a little dramatic, even if it is referring to another godawful Muni ride. Stay youth, indeed.

Bender’s has two amazing vegan tacos on its menu: the seitan taco and the grilled veggie taco, which, in addition to grilled veggies, also has smashed-up pieces of their homemade vegan burger in it. Both feature hunks of avocado, tangy pickled red cabbage, and, surprisingly, enough salt that I didn’t need to add any – remarkable since I have never in my life eaten anything and thought it was too salty.

You know what’s great about Bender’s? They don’t refer to the seitan taco as a “fake chicken” taco. I like this because seitan is real food, not fake chicken: it’s just real seitan, in all its chewy, crumbly, mouthfeely glory. Two omnivorous vegan-taco-enthusiast friends joined me for dinner and chose the vegan ones over the meaty ones on the menu. On purpose. Also, a friendly black dog named Mortimer wanted to steal them.

That’s right, friends: Seitan is real. And it’s saltier that the sweat of John Henry’s brow.

As you already know, a bunch of local businesses were vandalized last night, causing what could be upwards of thousands of dollars in damage. An anonymous community member has stepped up and started a donation page, and the collected funds will go toward helping repair the businesses that were affected in last night’s riots.

These businesses include (but may not be limited to):

• Brick and Mortar
• Taca Airlines
• 299 Valencia
• Tradesmen
• Property Management Systems
• The Voyager Shop
• Four Barrel
• Pica Pica Maize Kitchen
• Art Zone 461 Gallery
• Locanda
• Bar Tartine
• Tartine Bakery
• Therapy
• Weston Wears
• Mission Police Station
• Farina

UPDATE: A lot of you are wondering whether this is a real donation page or a scam. I contacted the creator of the fund, and here’s what he had to say.

So I just moved into the area a little over a week ago and am very big into people taking care of their community. My Facebook account is facebook.com/ben if that helps put my name and reputation behind it. Also if there’s a way to give more authenticity to this please let me know.

As far as distribution and goal amount, I’m trying to crowd source it a bit by getting businesses to contact us with the extent of the damage but if that doesn’t work i’ll go out there and try and get hard numbers myself.

The dollar amount was simply something to shoot for that felt meaningful enough and doable. I’m open to ideas as to how to fairly distribute it, but rather than spend days debating that I’d rather get people mobilized and inspired to show their support.

I will say that I think other shows of support could be fantastic as well. I don’t know if it’s a day where we go and visit each business together, or send them something… I think something in addition to the money would be great.

UPDATE #2: It has been brought to our attention that there is a small transaction fee when you donate. Ben has generously offered to cover this fee.

[Photo via Mission Local]

[via Zoë Banks]

Our pal Lizzy had an upsetting thing happen the other night while trying to have a drink at Dr. Teeth:

As I walked up I was taking my ID out of my pocket to show the bouncer. He gave me an appraising look and said “you’re okay,” and gestured me to head in without really checking it. Then this guy standing next to him said “no no, wait, I’M checking IDs.” I don’t want to get into stereotypes but I’ll just say here that he looked like kind of an asshole.

Call me dumb, but it was kind of chaotic, plus I try to be polite to people working door, so I handed him my ID. A second later, someone I presume to be his friend said “no, that guy’s not checking IDs.”

So I said, “hey, give me my ID back” and reached over to grab it from his hand. He grabbed my wrist pretty hard and held my ID away from me.

I don’t really like being grabbed by big dudes — he was probably twice my size. So I yelled at him “LET GO OF MY FUCKING WRIST AND GIVE ME MY ID.”

Yeah, let go of her fucking wrist. You’re not being funny. DON’T GRAB PEOPLE.

Read on.

[Photo by Ariel Dovas]

We mentioned it and published a pic the other day, but now you can watch a whole video about this new extreme sport. I wonder which team gets disqualified if the ball rolls under a car’s gas tank and a whole city block explodes into flame.

View the video here.

This is a pretty solid update on an old classic. It’s better than this one, though it lacks the cute illustrations of this one.

I especially like the “ppl from san diego” part.

[via mykittensdontrespectme]

We announced its return yesterday morning, and it survived a riot so that people could enjoy it in the riot’s aftermath, but now it is gone.

As Emily who took this photo says, “Fuck everything about the last twenty-four hours.” [link]

A reminder that there’s more to May Day, Occupy, or whatever the hell you want to call it, than all that shit from last night.