Mission Mission

According to Capp Street Crap, the iconic porn shop is revamping for a less seedy look, apparently taking design cues from Good Vibrations:

The decades-old shop near 17th and Mission streets is also being renamed Mission Secrets, all part of an effort, according to manager James Aragon, to attract more female clientele. This week, the store’s previously blue exterior was being painted beige, the interior had been lightened up, and a worker had taken down its trademark “Adult Superstore” sign. Those giant, suggestive and utterly ridiculous pictures of a man and woman that used to flank the front door, had also been covered up.

Aragon said the remodel is not to draw in more of the Mission’s moneyed residents, just to make the store more inviting to passersby.

“You have your good and bad,” he said, adding that more police presence seems to have brought more weekend foot traffic to his stretch of Mission Street. “During the weekends you have a lot of people, a lot of women walking around.”

According to Aragon, the store has begun carrying hosiery, more sex toys geared to women, and will soon have a display in the front window with a mannequin modeling the lingerie it has begun selling. On Friday, the area behind the cashier had been wallpapered and two fake orchids hung on shelves on either side of an ornate mirror. With upgrades, however, comes higher costs. Aragon said the store’s viewing booths will go from $5 to $10 and there will be a $15 all-day pass.

Boy, I’m gonna miss seeing that iconic storefront and signage from the Secret Alley. Read on for more photos and a quote about the “riff raff” in the neighborhood.

[First photo via Yelp]

Local blogger anadromy tells us about his current living situation:

Some bees have made a hive inside one of my bedroom walls. I guess I’ll have to tell the landlord about it but I’ve been too busy lately. At night, the bees make a faint ticking sound above my head. I think it’s the sound of them doing whatever it is they do inside the insulation. The sound is almost exactly like the sound of rain and in the middle of the night, I wake up and forget about the bees and I get sort of happy because I love the sound of rain and we’re in the middle of a terrible drought and really need rain here. Then I wake up and remember it was just the bees. [link]

Well that’s pretty pleasant. Much more so than all those unexplained bee attacks.

[Photo by Sami Lynch]

Jefferson from Mission Bicycle Company recently contacted us with the following warning:

There are so many bikes stolen in this city it’s ridiculous. Most stolen bikes were:

• Not locked up at all but left in a “secure” places like a garage.
• Not locked up with a quality lock (cheap generic u-lock or cable lock)
• Not locked up properly (Front wheel only, locked up to a wooden rail, etc.).

This past week we saw two bikes stolen within around 24 hour hours of each other. Both locked up properly, with quality u-locks. Both were twisted open.

• Wednesday 8/27  8:30 PM – 3:00 AM – 18th Street between Church & Sanchez
• Thursday 8/28  10:00 PM – 12:30 AM – Alabama between 19th & 20th.

If anyone hears of a bike stolen using a similar method, I would encourage them to file a police report and send a tweet to https://twitter.com/SFPDBikeTheft.

Let’s work together to nail “The Twister”!!!

[via Emily]