Mission Mission

I’m no NIMBY, but I liked how you used to be able to see all four Bay Bridge towers from the park. The westernmost tower is now obstructed by One Rincon Hill, as you can see here. Thankfully, Susie at Curbed says plans for Two Rincon Hill, which looks like it would have obstructed the next westernmost tower,  have been scrapped suspended, due to some kind of problem with the economy. Link (via SFist).

Update: Whoops. View of Bay Bridge from Dolores Park to remain somewhat unobstructed, for a while longer at least.

Photo by Moncrief Speaks.

Previously on Mission Mission:

Future View of Downtown from Dolores Park

Reader Catherine forwards us the details:

On October 29, District 9 supervisorial candidates David Campos, Eric Quezada, Eva Royale, Mark Sanchez, Eric Storey, and Tom Valtin will be on hand to answer your questions at the Precita Center.

District 9 Candidate Q&A
Wednesday
October 29th
6:30PM
at the Precita Center
(534 Precita between Florida & Alabama)

Sponsored by Precita Valley Neighbors, Rolph Playground Neighbors, San Jose/Guerrero Neighbors, and the East Mission Improvement Association.

If you can’t make it, the Quezada campaign’s website will be streaming the event live.

Photo of the Precita Center by amster girl.

I’m no birder, but I’d wager that this duck hawk (and apparent Capp Street resident) is officially badass. Glenn Nevill has the story, and a bunch more pictures — many of them CLOSEUPS — right here. He also vows to keep a watchful eye on the beast, so stay tuned for further developments.

I saw this on the side of a gumball machine outside Val 16 Market. It is a bright orange baby head with gumballs or marbles or atoms or something in its cranial cavity. Wha!? I made it the wallpaper on my phone, and my phone has never been happier.

Also, I checked Flickr to see if anyone had a higher resolution photograph, but found something else good instead.

Update (Oct. 30): Baby head is by a guy called Paul Insect. Thanks, Wooster Collective!

The Ladder Herald found some fish swimming upstream on a Dearborn Street sidewalk. Link.

SFGate just put up a lengthy report on the pros and cons of the city’s gang injunction zone effort. In it, we hear from city officials as well as hardscrabble kids living hardscrabble lives:

“We can’t go back to our neighborhood where we grew up,” said DeLeon, who now lives in Oakland and has an older brother on the injunction list. “I can’t see my family and have a barbecue.”

Herrera and police gang officers see a different possible moral to DeLeon’s story. They believe the injunction may provide gang members with an antidote to peer pressure – an excuse to avoid people and situations that once brought trouble.

Link.

For Sarah Palin, Saturday Night Live gets Tina Fey out of retirement. No such love for Matt Gonzalez: When Weekend Update’s anchor asks the guy playing Ralph Nader about his running mate, Nader pulls out a Spanish-speaking sock puppet named Manuel. Link.

Previously on Mission Mission:

Graying Matt Gonzalez Photographed a Lot at Soap Gallery Opening

Matt For Mayor T-Shirt Drew No Ire

This week, Mission Street Food enters a cocoon for a period of hibernation. Next week, it will emerge as a beautiful new butterfly. According to the official blog:

We’re announcing a new format for Mission Street Food: each week, we’ll feature a local guest chef/cook, who will offer his or her own dishes in addition to our regular menu.

To make this change possible, we’ll be moving from the truck into an actual restaurant. We’ve been talking with some local restaurants about sharing space, and we’ll announce the details in a few days. We’ll be closed this week for planning and will re-open somewhere in the Mission on November 6.

Link. This sounds great, but will the sandwiches be as fun to eat sitting at a table, indoors? Will it still be street food?

Mission Loc@l reports on Wednesday’s big Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid of the SRO above Taqueria Cancun (among other locations), a raid that resulted in a number of alleged racketeers and murderers behind bars and many area residents and activists up in arms over the tactics used:

At 4:45 a.m. on Wednesday morning the residents of the Prita Hotel, at 2284 Mission Street, awoke abruptly to the sound of a smoke bomb exploding on the hotel roof. Moments later, more than 30 police, SWAT and immigration officials stormed the building with guns drawn, residents said.

Lots more, including a wealth of criticism, here. And the SFGate coverage looks at the full scope of the operation, including busts as far away as Reno. Thanks, Mitch!

Carlos Reyes just put up a post titled Skateboarding’s Not a Competition. Ostensibly, it’s about skateboarding, but it contains good advice for all of us creative types in the neighborhood. Here, he talks a bit about himself and his homies:

We don’t care about skills. If something sick happens, we’re stoked, we don’t get bummed that we can’t or can do the same trick. It’s just a shared experience we all have. But anyways, it doesn’t really matter to me who’s better than me or who I’m better than. That has never crossed my mind. If I skate with rippers, that’s rad and it’s fun, but it’s also the same fun as I’ll have if I skate with beginners or whatever. I don’t pay attention to who’s doing what because when you start to, the fun starts to go away.

Solid advice, Carlos! Lots more to the argument here.