Mission Mission

On Sunday, we did a post about a flyer that had been showing up around the neighborhood encouraging neighbors to report prostitutes, pimps and johns to the authorities. Its comments thread has been going strong all week, with numerous debates about cleanliness, criminality and sex workers’ rights getting fierier and fierier.

Yesterday afternoon’s exchange between a prostitute named Rhonda and a neighbor named “zinzin” makes for an especially great read. Rhonda gets things rolling:

It’s so easy to become a prostitute when you are an attractive young woman. You get cruised all the time. Too much time. It’s annoying, and much better to learn how to negotiate early on!

Why not *talk* *to* *the* *prostitutes* We have voices. We have brains, we are human. Don’t make decisions for us, don’t talk badly about us, don’t treat us like helpless victims, and please don’t make any decisions for us. Talk to us instead.

See the rest of the dialogue (including an epic open letter to prostitutes in the neighborhood and beyond).

We decided on Drew’s story, probably because it blends humor and excitement with horrible, horrible violence. Also, Drew strikes the right tone, coming across not as a transient dabbler in San Francisco, but as someone who calls this place home.

For his troubles, Drew will receive an S-Castro t-shirt from MuniShirts — blue ink on a light blue American Apparel adult medium. His story starts like this:

I’m riding the bus down Market street in Civic Center around midnight sitting near the back door when a middle-aged homeless guy in the very back starts lighting up a cigarette. The driver yells to him “You can’t smoke here”. Homeless guy flips him off and puffs away. Driver says “No you don’t; not on my bus!”. Driver slams on the brakes at Market between 6th and 7th, gets up, walks down the aisle, rips the cigarette out of the guys’s mouth and throws it out the window. “Out!”, the driver yells.

See how it ends.

I spent some time in Berlin last month, a lot of it riding bikes, and it was tremendously enjoyable: Dedicated bike lanes, little fear of theft. But it is different. Everybody’s on old clunkers bogged down with a thousand pounds (er, a bajillion kilograms) of fender, chain guard, off-road tires, baskets, bells, whistles, etc. So we go slow.

In San Francisco, biking will get you to your destination faster than driving. In Berlin, biking will get you to your destination a little bit faster than walking. But it’s great.

Didn’t see a lot of fixies (or helmets for that matter). Just now Kevin from Everything is Everything sent me a link to this GOOD story:

Berlin Gives Fixies das Boot

You can’t ride your fixie, but you can drink beer on the subway, so it all evens out I guess. Thanks, Kevin!

Reader Jeff D. was at Mission Street Food last week, when the menu was a big awesome fuck-you (or love letter?) to McDonald’s:

As a female aims to jam a spoon into the top of her McSunday’s plastic lid.…

male 1: “there’s no hole there!”
male 2: “that’s what she said.”

Thanks, Jeff! See the menu here.

More fun with McDonald’s:

McShit at I Heart Street Art.

Golden Arches on YouTube.

(Note: This is the first installment of what will be a new series in which our buddy Sunny takes an in-depth look at something awesome about the neighborhood. We’re thinking of calling it “It’s Always Sunny in the Mission.”)

By Sunny Angulo

The Mission is a breeding ground for coffee shops and their requisite groupies, each one drawing their own line in the sand that separates their distinctive mini-fiefdom from the competition. So when my friend Greg told me that he was the new delivery guy for De La Paz coffee, I had to rack my brain to place the shop. That’s because the local small-batch roaster doesn’t operate a café, but supplies retail and private customers with their 100% fair-trade and organic beans out of their Treat Street hideaway.

They further piqued my interest when Greg told me that they make all of their deliveries via bicycle, and are the only shop to screenprint all of their packaging and propaganda on biodegradable and recycled materials. Sweet.

I swung by their warehouse, which they share with Kachusha “Chuey” Munkanta, founder and sewing wizard behind CHUEY BRAND caps. There I found the 3-person crew hard at work roasting a new batch of San Emilio beans from El Salvador, with colorful swatches of their handprinted labels drying on the table. (You, too, can own a used roaster for the low low price of $30,000!)

De La Paz Cofee is named after founder Jason Benford’s wife, MariPaz. He was bitten with the coffee bug while doing his graduate study in agro-ecology at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

“We studied sustainable farming practices, and spent a lot of time on small coffee farmers. I was struck at the gap between organic quality and high-end pricing,” Jason said. “We source only fair-trade and organic, and put a lot of focus on the small farms that supply the beans. Honestly, I got into this with the idea that I’d just be happy if we could get this message out to a larger audience and make organic accessible.” Jason has visited most of the farms that he buys from, and some of them are pretty cool. One of the co-op’s De La Paz sources beans from consists of 76 families, all of which own and operate their own small farms in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The collective model has helped the members set aside money for healthcare, childcare and educational opportunities. (For more info on fair trade coffee, check out the epic documentary Black Gold.)

So…do-gooder coffee, check. Mission warehouse with crafty co-tenant, check. Other things to dig about De La Paz? Their dedicated bike worship. Jason said that was a deliberate move on their part to complete the whole ecological package. They recently co-sponsored Bike To Work Day and donated “a shitload” of coffee to energizer stations around San Francisco. Greg Rodgers is the official man-about-town on his trusty Kona HUMUHUMU-NUKUNUKU-APUA’A, souped up by one of Jason’s friends to take on the hills of San Francisco with some serious coffee poundage.

I thought Greg’s personal best of 15 bags (roughly around 60 lb.) was impressive, but Sharky Senesac (real name) put Greg to shame with a fabled 105 lb up front in the cargo basket and 15 lb on his back. Showoff.

Sharky is the “warehouse guy” and very serious about his beans. “I love coffee.” Enough said. Over half of their average 1,000 lb a week are single origin medium roast, and I noticed that several shops around town sell both Ritual Coffee and De La Paz, but for different uses.

“Yeah, there’s definitely more of a curatorial taste for coffee right now, it’s the hot product. A lot of cafes will offer multiple selections to give customers different options, like a bar,” Jason said. “Somewhere like Mojo Bike Café uses our espresso products and Ritual drip coffee, but it’s the reverse at Haus who use our drip and pressed coffee products and Ritual espresso. A lot of it is how baristas make the coffee. It could taste totally different if it’s not made properly, which is why we place such a big emphasis on training café staff how to get the most flavor out of our coffee.” On that tip, Sharky is flying out to Texas to train staff at a new café brewing De La Paz coffee this week. Jetsetter.

What of the tense air of competition between roasters and cafes in the Mission? (Word is that non-competition clauses and loyalty statements are being circulated among the coffee triumvirate of Blue Bottle, Ritual Roasters and Four Barrel.) It definitely surprised Jason, but he tries to steer clear of anything smacking of pretension. “Yeah, I never thought it would be that crazy. You know, I don’t have a coffee background at all, so I guess I thought there’d be more of a communal vibe with so many people all interested in the same thing, more communal hangouts. But, I think we’re the only outfit run by a grown man.” Touché. It’s true that Four Barrel often reminds me of a giant boys’ clubhouse, industrial din and all. And Ritual is like being in a tattoo salon with wireless and no seats. Greg chimed in, “Well, we’re not a café, so we don’t have to worry about affecting an atmosphere and stuff like that. We’re just here to make good coffee.”

Yes, coffee: do the crew have their favorite beans? “Hmmm… well, coffee is a fruit, so it’s seasonal. We don’t keep anything for a long time, because you have different flavors in different seasons. Currently, I like our Costa Rica Las Lajas. I like how that particular farm processes their coffee, they dry it differently than other farms in the region.” Greg is into the nuttiness of the Peru El Norte, and Sharky likes the Brazil Poco Fundo. The Mission Blend is one of their top sellers (Jason thinks it has to do with the name), though it’s one of the few blends they do, as they tend to showcase the specific farms the beans come from.

One other perk that Jason is going to wish I hadn’t reminded people of? Somewhere on their website, De La Paz offers free delivery to all its customers – even individuals. He says they actually used to deliver to a lot of private homes, but now it’s mostly firms, plus the cafes and retail outfits like Bi-Rite, Blue Fog and RJ’s Market. Who is one of Jason’s favorite wholesale customers? “Rainbow Grocery, probably. I like what they’re all about.” He’s also into Stable Café at Folsom and 17th. “They do an excellent job of brewing the coffee the way it’s supposed to be made.” There’s a full list of the cafes that stock their beans on the site, but Haus and Pirate Cat Café are two in the Mission for people that want to keep it local and people do seem to like the coffee. I myself took home a bag of the San Emilio, which I’ve already drunk too much of. If you’re going to pick up an addiction in the Mission, though, I guess this is better than some other popular standards…

For proof, check out Everything is Everything for a series of photos that includes fire and smiles and full-frontal nudity:

june critical mass 2009

This week on I Heart Street Art, some rad scenes from Barcelona:

I Heart Street Art Goes To Barcelona

Says reader rai sue:

Suriya thai has just been reborn at 1532 Howard St btwn 11th & 12th. Talked to Suriya yesterday, and he said they moved due to landlord issues. Who knows? But they have pumpkin curry on the lunch menu–yum!

But does the new space boast an adjacent garage door onto which the elephant mural can be also rebirthed?

Aaron Mayfield-Sunshine mentioned something about this in the comments of another post, so we asked for more details. Here they are:

going around the cool kid community is some totally gnarly flu- it could be swine flu, or kangaroo flu or regular flu, who knows. ground zero was a bridez show at el rincon, we think, because everyone was sneaking alcohol in, and sharing drinks and getting sloppy, and so who knows how many flu bugs jumped from person to person. The upshot is anyone who wants to avoid being sick needs to avoid cool kids and there events for at least another week while the virus burns out.

Heard that? Stay away from cool kids! Thanks, Aaron!

[via Box Dog Blog]