Mission Mission

SFGate reports:

Authorities said they would take several steps in response to the violence, including increasing beat patrols along Mission Street, adding cars to parts of the Mission and Ingleside neighborhoods and doubling the number of school resource officers at Mission High School.

The article features further comment by police officials as well as profiles of victims of recent shootings. Link.

Dan’s Hole in the Wall just posted a story about an interesting adventure in the neighborhood:

Our team of seven was sent into the Mission District for a project entitled “Meet A Need.” The team is given $20 and told to wander around, find somebody with a need, and use the $20 to meet it. Hence the name. (Oh: and you couldn’t meet a need simply by giving somebody the money. That’s a bad way to help people.)

Link to full story.

Debate got pretty lively in the comments section of Monday’s post about the drive-by shooting at Farina. Frequent commenter zinzin lays out a compelling case, one we feel you all should read in its entirety. And remember to vote in November:

Iain, i could not agree more. we are 110% in accord. that’s exactly what i meant…more police presence, more dialog, more relationships, more efficacy. these gangbanger knuckleheads will respond to only 2 things in the short term: force, and a hit to their pocketbooks. More cops out there in the world can do both. deporting illegal felons, i could not agree more.

(and i certainly understand that these dudes are driven to “the life” by a world of circumstances not helped by oily hipsters (me in 1991) or yuppie scum (me now) stealing their hood block by block: lack of opportunity, lack of education, lack of services, lack of all the things that enable me & my ilk to enjoy an $800 pesto at Farina. for sure, i get it and i wish it was different. that said, i CANNOT sit by & tolerate this kind of crap where families walk with kids. hipstery or not.)

that being said, marking some imaginary (sorry katie) line between the “hipstery” mission and the “yuppie” mission…or snarking about “Baja Noe Valley or Marina Annex” (sorry Josh) …is so totally lame. typical hipster apathy. these kind of views have got to be the most short sighted, immature, bullshit excuse for comments i have ever seen. this is our Mission, you lazy self-satisfied babies. you, me, the latino family on the corner, even the schitzoid homeless dude whose shit i clean up twice a week.

so you mean to say you PREFER shootings? you PREFER human feces all over the street? you PREFER crackwhores, and open air heroin markets? You say that’s keepin it real?

I say bullshit. You’re lying if you say you do. You say you “like the grit” because you’re still living in Jr High and you need to be “cool”. Fuck that. Most hipsters i know – including a younger me – are (over)educated, have decent jobs and ascribe to a surprisingly mainstream set of goals.

My guess is most of the folks commenting here do NOT live in the teeny activist stripe of the Misison hipster contingency. Most of them are probably cultural creative class, college educated, and buying lunch at BiRite along with the rest of us. Hell, most real activists and artists that i know moved out of the city along time ago….can’t afford even a place in the “hipstery” parts of the hood.

look for posts i have written in the past. unless some of this crap is taken under control, ALL of the Mission will become the “yuppie” part, because the city will sell the neighborhood to real estate developers. just like Times Square, or Williamsburg, or Astoria in NY.

Read the Eastern Neighborhood Plan that’s about to pass the Board (you all know we have a Board of Supervisors, right? And that the Mission District 9 Supe is up for election in November, right? Or maybe can’t take time out of shopping for ironic plaid pants to be educated?).

It’s going to enable – along with the usual bullshit low-income, tenants rights, mixed-use / light industrial progressive politics crap that makes the Mission a dumping ground for the city’s refuse – practically unlimited development of yuppie condos. 19th & Valencia. 20th & Valencia. 18th & Mission. The New College buildings. You watch.

so you can sit around and say “i like it gritty” or “this ain’t the mission no more” or “that’s the yuppie part of the neighborhood”. or you can open your fucking eyes and get off your lazy, entitled asses and do something to preserve the beauty, diversity and special qualities of the hood we have.

because if you dont, well, you’ll be living in West Oak. which is nice and gritty. and on the same trajectory, 2 or 3 years later. after that, i have no idea. as i have said before, there ain’t no Bushwick or Red Hook in SF, yo.

Link to comments section, if you need more context.

*Do* participate in interracial handshakes. But seriously, Barrio Libre seems to be a blog-based effort to clean up the neighborhood. Their mission statement specifically addresses the rise in violent crime we’ve all seen in recent months:

This summer marked a dramatic return of violence to the Mission District with night time gunfire, thefts & assaults and weekly homicides. Violence and hopelessness have become ways of life. People are shot and killed in broad daylight, and nothing is done about it. We will be advocates for this neighborhood. We will challenge the status quo. We work for a Barrio Libre (Neighborhood Freedom).

Link. Photo by reader Jen Boynton, who notes that there’s also a Spanish version of the poster. Which reminds me, shouldn’t we have a Spanish version of Mission Mission?

Scott Scotch Wichmann reports:

Suddenly I heard the high-pitched pops of Chinese firecrackers right outside the restaurant’s front window—one, then two more, then yelling, then something in my gut made me whisper, “Get down!” and I grabbed the wife and we hit the concrete floor about the same moment as everyone else. We heard more pops and people running outside. I glanced up and saw women in dresses sprawled flat, men in suits, busboys, waiters, napkins, bits of food…anybody looking in from outside would’ve seen a desolate restaurant full of empty chairs.

See the full story here.

Previously on Mission Mission:

Best Pesto in the World is at Farina?

On Friday, Animal posted this shot of a mobile guard tower currently deployed in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. By applying the Panopticon principle (thanks, Alex) to sketchy neighborhood intersections, the NYPD hopes to curtail rising crime rates. Got us thinking. The other day, Mitch (Mission resident since 1991) delivered the following rant about about one of our own sketchy intersections:

what about 16th & Mission? How the hell is that blight allowed to exist? [...] crackheads and prostitutes. out in the open, plain as day, 24/7. in what reality is that shit OK? and who WOULDN’T want that shit gone? and why isnt it gone?

Now, I guarantee that Mitch doesn’t support Orwellian shit of any kind — and nor does anyone we’d dare associate with — so what’s the real solution? And hypothetically, were the SFPD to install a collapsible privacy-invasion turret in the heart of the Mission, what would happen?

Previously on Mission Mission:

Cops Cruise Right Up Onto the Sidewalk

Mission Wackos vs. Pier 39 Fanny Packs: Open Letter to SFPD

The Chronicle says there’s a dilemma about what to do about Dolores Park. I didn’t realize there was a problem, but one dude explains:

“A few weeks ago, for example, somebody invited 100 people to party, and 300 to 400 showed up,” said Gideon Kramer, who has lived near the park for 30 years. “The problem is there are too many permitted events already, and basically an atmosphere of lax enforcement by the Recreation and Park Department lets people make the assumption that they can go over there and do whatever they want.”

Well yeah, don’t we all go to Dolores Park because we can do whatever we want? (And man, I wish I could throw a party for 100 and have 400 show up.) Anyway, the lax enforcement also extends — allegedly — to rules about nudity and excessive drinking, and the story says this makes some residents sad because it is “preventing them from bringing their children to the park.” Yeah right! I see hundreds of kids having grand old times in Dolores Park like every day.

Bevan Dufty is gonna see about sending more police patrols into the park, so I’m gonna run down there right now and get naked and drunk before they start ruining all the fun.

Link to story.

“The criminalization of nudity” photo by SanFranAnnie

Previously on Mission Mission:

Full Bowl of Humans for ‘Breakfast’

Bus Shelter Ad Features Constipated Asian Woman Hovering Over Dolores Park

Google Maps Walking Directions Lets You Plan Route Through Dolores Park

Dolores Park Playground Renovation Promises Fences, Safety

Holla Back SF today shares Karen’s tale of this perv who accosted her and a friend on the street near 16th and Mission:

We told him to fuck off and he just kept laughing and saying stuff that we couldn’t understand, but that was obviously sexual. We slowed way down because we didn’t want him behind us anymore and he promptly dropped his pants halfway down his thighs while still chuckling so we had to stare at his nasty ass for the rest of the block.

Link to full story.

Lights flashing, they exit the squad car and start demanding IDs. I was not wearing an XXL whitey, so I got away scot free, but is it really so necessary to jump the curb in such a big-body automobile?

Previously on Mission Mission:

Prime Police Parking

Open Letter to SFPD Regarding Mission Wackos

Violence in the Mission

SFPD CrimeMAPS Skimp on Homicide Stats

Yesterday, Petals in the Gazebo published a pleasant feature on the murals of Balmy Alley. It explains that the diversity of the murals is indicative of the diversity of the neighborhood as a whole, and concludes with the following:

[T]ake a peak through the knot-hole of a mural-painted fence and you’ll see and old car supported on blocks or a latino washing his truck or a patio table and chairs.

So how ’bout it? What other things of note have you seen whilst spying on your neighbors through a knothole? Link.

Photo by Zurdo Go.