Mission Mission

We’ve been running Katie & Brittany‘s after-show drama talk for almost a year and I had yet to accompany them for a performance. Last week I was finally able to tag along for The Speakeasy, a new experiential performance in the Tenderloin. Here’s our report:

[photo by Peter Liu]

We’d heard a buzz about a unique underground club and theater in the Tenderloin. The folks at Boxcar Theatre have been working on an immersive theater piece that places audiences in the middle of 1920’s San Francisco. Speakeasy has lots of intrigue surrounding it, from the undisclosed location, to the interwoven stories being performed by embedded actors throughout the space. It was enticing enough to get our fearless leader, Ariel, out with us for a night of Drama Talk & Drinks.

Ariel: I loved that it was a world you could be in and not just be a passive audience member. I think they did a really good job of taking me to that place. To go from seeing them on the stage to a space where you could see the behind the scenes drama . . . it was amazing, I just wanted to go back and forth all night. (Ed. note: there was a space where you could spy on the dressing room through a one-way mirror)

Brittany: It was very cool. It was the ultimate in FOMO though. I kept wondering what was going on somewhere else. “Oh my god, there’s a noise in the other room should I be over there?”.

A: Did that bother you? I liked that about it.

B: I guess it bothered me in that I thought, what if I’m not getting everything I’m supposed to get out of the show?

Katie: That is exactly how I felt and I would say that it did bother me. I was trying to enjoy what was happening in front of me but I couldn’t get out of my mind “What’s going on in the other rooms?” Then there was that moment where we were supposed to follow the girl in the red dress and everyone got up and tried to follow her, but since everyone did that there was a bottleneck and we couldn’t get into the other room because of all the people. And I’m someone who doesn’t like crowds.

A: What made me enjoy it more was that the world wasn’t just propped up for me to see but the idea that this world is all around me and I’m just in it. I feel like if I walked into the room and the other rooms went dark it wouldn’t have felt totally immersive. But the idea that I could walk away from you guys and see something else and you guys are seeing something that I’m not seeing . . . It didn’t bother me that I didn’t see the whole story, I liked that about it. It’s just like regular life, we all got our different part of the story.

K: I don’t know, I live “regular life” enough, sometimes I just wanna go to a show and fucking be entertained. I’m in life twenty-fo-seven, I gotta pay $60 to feel life’s disappointments – the 1920’s version?

B: But this life has cool costumes.

K: That’s true.

(more…)

We left out a number of good bar anagrams when last we surveyed this topic, so here we go again:

Bold Curve = Dovre Club
You Oral Cock = Royal Cuckoo
Cork Bra = Rock Bar
“Rum,” I lied = Delirium
Let’s Tag = Gestalt
Both No Hope = Phone Booth
Cut, Toke, Honk = The Knockout
Long Android = Iron and Gold
Robe Loom = Elbo Room
Panned Party = Napper Tandy
Out Homo-Meerkat = The Make-Out Room
Yes Colon = Clooney’s

We’ve included some La Lenguan bars this time. (Maybe next we’ll do the rest of SF too.) As always, highlight the list to see the translations.

[Cut, Toke, Honk photo by @ezeweez]

It’s Z Dating Game at Z Space! And it happens again this Friday! It’s just like whatever dating game show you watched on TV back in the day, but it’s live, and in the Mission, and there’s booze and swearing!

RSVP and invite your friends!

To win a pair of tickets, tell us your best/worst Valentine’s Day anecdote in the comments section below. Winner will be judged based on merit and notified asap. Contest ends at 5pm today.

So it begins RT @RawStory: Sen. Lieberman: Cut Social Security to prevent cuts to defense budget http://cot.ag/o0iCIe

— Tim Dickinson (@7im) August 2, 2011

So it begins MT @romenesko: Emergency Alert System hacked, warning viewers “dead bodies are rising from their graves.” http://t.co/PFV32APd — Tim Dickinson (@7im) February 11, 2013
 

so it begins “@wjhenn: Pentagon considers stimulating troops’ brains w/ “easy-to-apply electrodes” http://t.co/J5TynGY2q5”

— Tim Dickinson (@7im) February 20, 2014

And finally:

so it begins “@missionmission: Google to open new offices right around the corner from Trick Dog: http://t.co/iIjhYystp5” — Tim Dickinson (@7im) February 17, 2014
 

So whatever “it” is, it definitely involves the military, hackers, zombies, brain experiments — and Google moving into the Mission.

This is a still from a short film by Rice Paper Scissors (who recently opened a new brick-and-mortar on Mission Street). Watch it here.

Doubt anyone’s going to mess with that. Of course, you’d better hope that whoever decides to park in front of you knows how to parallel park without too much trial and error.

Me and my pal Corntard were eating some of those awesome new Guatemalan hot dogs in the City College courtyard the other day when all of a sudden a pair of porta-potties took flight! Here they are, soaring over the Mission:

From there they gained altitude, veered eastward and landed safely on Mission Street. It was majestic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig4fUOBwsbU

[link]

Oh my goodness, you guys, being a gay man in San Francisco is glorious! Our 5th episode of Looking takes us on a 24-hour date with Patrick and Richie as they wander through San Francisco and talk first sexual experiences, coming out stories, and putting Ds in Bs.

The episode (titled “Looking for the Future”) starts off with Patrick waking up at Richie’s place and tip-toeing off to work — but Richie wakes up before he can dine and ditch, and we discover that the pair have spent a few nights together at this point. Patrick finally heads out, only to turn back around less than half a block away to hop back into Richie’s bed. What ensues is a pretty decent sex scene that every mainstream entertainment outlet this week has warned us about with shitty copy like “Get ready to put your game face on to check out Jonathan Groff’s eye-popping O-face!” and such. P got a beej, ok?

The boys head to St. Francis Fountain for breakfast and continue talking; we find out Patrick is tested for STDs regularly, that Richie’s last boyfriend was HIV positive (“I loved him, so what are you gonna do?”), that Patrick loves Goonies. Patrick decides to call in sick to work, and the rest of the day is one big walk and talk and it’s all very Annie Hall (or West Wing?).

We hop on the J-Church (hey buddy!) en route to Golden Gate Park, find out both boys are former fatties, and learn about first sexual experiences. Patrick and Richie head to the Morrison Planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences for more H2H-ing. I am immediately reminded of Dylan and Kelly’s Griffith Observatory planetarium makeout on 90210 (that summer they were cheating on Brenda!), a total Rebel Without a Cause ref aired during the golden age of Bev-Niner. Patrick and Richie are totally not on the same page as me and instead evoke Ross and Rachel’s planetarium makeout on Friends, which made me roll my eyes and go “ugh, gays” (and then I immediately felt bad).

The fellas discuss B-sex, and we learn that Patrick isn’t sure he’s into it. We learn the phrase “bottom shame” (which is now ingrained in my personal lexicon), and discuss things like people immediately picturing a D in your B when you come out. The night ends with Patrick opening up and telling Richie he might be ready to try it all out soon.

Now stay with me here. All this B-sex talk is significant, because this is not a show about struggling with sexuality. The heroes of our story are not 17 years old; they have been out for a while, are comfortable in their gayness, and navigating relationships. This show is taking shit to the next level. Looking rolls its eyes at the two-episode gay character who teaches us about self-discovery and bounces, because Looking is not about teaching straight people how hard it is to be gay. Us frumpy straights are not watching characters whose sexuality defines them, we’re just checking out some gay dudes on the daily and hearing what universal and more niche relationship, class, and cultural issues come up along the way.

Now I know I initially complained that, though I understood Looking was to be a realistic portrayal of gay men in San Francisco, the show wasn’t fabulous enough (yeah, I’m a dick). I stand by that assertion of the first 3 episodes, which really did this show a disservice by not introducing our characters more dynamically and likely losing initial viewers. The difference between episode 1 and episode 5 is that while episode 1 was staring at us with knowing looks and promising they’d fill us in later, episode 5 is both filling us in and saying hey, here’s a really good book you should read. Top shame!

Oh, enough about you. Sing us out, Morrissey.

Spotted in this episode: Richie’s apartment on 24th between Florida and Bryant in between Dreams Hair Salon and Sugarlump Coffee, St. Francis Fountain, the J-Church, Golden Gate Park, a hat tip to the buffalos in the park, the Morrison Planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences, the beach.

Some found street art in Clarion Alley.

Well, that’s one way get some of the corporate buses off the streets.  According to an article on VC Post, the embattled tech giant has reserved the former office of Howard Quinn, a newspaper and catalog printer that went out of business in 2012 primarily due to the rise of digital publishing (you can still see the failed last-ditch effort “Digital Printing” sign on the building in the image above the banner is actually from H&H Printing, who moved across the street and are still in business).

Since the NE Mission area is mainly zoned for manufacturing, the new location will most likely serve as a lab for start ups acquired by Google that specialize in wearable technology and robotics, like that frightening techno-hound that will soon be running down insurgents and protesters alike in the near future:

A neighborhood resident quoted in the story provided some background:

“When Google is buying companies, they don’t want to work in the big corporate building in San Francisco or Mountain View. So they are acquiring something cool in the Mission where engineers want to work.”

While some believe that said “coolness” may arguably be leaving the city along along with out-priced artists and musicians, our pal Andy raises another important question:

“Hopefully city officials learned their lesson with the Twitter payroll tax cut fiasco and will quit the special treatment of these companies.”

I suppose we’ll see…

[Link via Mission Local, Image via Google Maps of course]