Mission Mission

Reader Josh I. explains:

Don’t know if you ever went to the Ace Cafe, on 14th and Mission, but it was one of those bars seriously beloved by a cadre of local motorcycle enthusiasts. Filmmaker pal Henry Dombey recently completed this short film following the last days of the bar.

It’s a moving little movie:

Found atop of a pile of discarded junk on York Street. Who this is?

Let’s take a closer look:

[via The Tenderloin Geographic Society]

The Tenderloin Geographic Society reports:

Let us remember with fondness the house that Q*bert built, for it is no more. [link]

If only we’d left the Mission more, maybe we’d have been able to enjoy this thing more. I think I saw one movie in that place, and I think it was some kind of special screening of the Coen Brothers’ now classic The Man Who Wasn’t There, and they handed out promotional plastic combs. I am remembering this with fondness.

It was kind of an art project, kind of a protest, from a time when citizens were about to vote on whether or not to allow more high-rises to be built. Gravel & Gold today published some pictures and an explanation by the great Tom Wolfe:

This coloring book is the work of 16 artists, and I like what they’ve done. (I haven’t written home about it, you understand, but I like it.) But I also like it for what it illustrates about the problems of social protest graphics. A high percentage of the entries for the show fell in that category, and almost all of them show the artists’ natural instincts (Me!) working at cross purposes with the cause he is lending his talent to. This coloring book was created in support of Alvin Duskin’s campaign to stop the spread of high-rise building in San Francisco (“ecology”). . . But most of the artists were obviously far more intrigued by the graphic possibilities of skyscrapers and Heartless Tycoons than of low-rise buildings and the common man. I’m sure that all children who actually used this hook learned to love skyscrapers and were filled with the ambition to build one, or at least go see a few.

Read on for more analysis from Wolfe and of more pictures.

Hey, look, a map of San Francisco!

Waaaaait a second, something’s different about this. <insert Wayne’s World time travel music> It’s Google Maps, 1853! Behold PastMapper, an utterly epic work in progress on the part of @bradvertising, bringing the 1853 Coast Survey map to life and geotagging the 1852 city directory on top of it.

In the 1850s, the Mission was where you went to party and drink on the weekend. The Mission Plank Road (the curve of which BART follows today) was completed in 1851.

There was a toll — just 25 cents for riders on horseback, 75 cents for two-horse wagons, one dollar for a four-horse team! (What a bargain compared to BART or Muni.)

Well, not so fast — a dollar in 1853 was worth about $30 today. A glass of ale cost 12 and a half cents, and the typical fine for drunk/disorderly conduct was $5.  Needless to say, lots of folks hoofed it along side trails, cutting through the sand dunes and Hayes Valley.

Anyway, the 1853 is only the start for Pastmapper.  I have it on good authority that the much more expansive 1857/1859 Coast Survey map (with much more of the Mission) is on the to-do list.

Pastmapper: bringing you yesterday, today!

2010

• Public radio dreamboat Ira Glass tagged a wall in what appeared to be some sort of viral marketing scheme for This American Life
• Janebook lamented about lame-o craigslist Mission rooms for rent, what with their no-boyfriends policies, weekly house meetings, and fucking chore wheels

2009

• Chicken John tried to sell his warehouse, but apparently he’s still there organizing Dolores Park vomiting parties
• The Ghostbusters moved to the Mission, ditched the hearse for a more economical station wagon

2008

• The droids you weren’t looking were muralized to promote “Iron Rich Foods”
• Phat Philly, the best place to score some imported Tastykakes, opened. Do their onion rings still kick ass?

2007

• Somebody couldn’t wait to get to the park and did 7 whippits on the J Church
• Mother nature left some unintentional dead rat street art

2010

• Local standup comedian Chris Garcia KILLED US with this bit all about the Mission
• A car plowed into a group of celebrating Giants fans, the driver was pulled out, and beaten by an angry mob

2009

• “You Occupy Wallstreet kids think you invented tagging banks, well we were doing it in 2009 when you were still worrying about midterms”
• Someone clearly partied too hard on Capp street

2008

• Everyone wants to say they live in the Mission, even though they really live in “Missiontrero”
• The UFO Response team took a case in the ‘hood. It probably turned out to be a weather balloon

2007

• Xeni from BoingBoing favorited a picture of a dumpster we posted, so apparently is what it takes to make it on the Internet. That, and steampunk Star Wars ukuleles.

It’s 1938. You need to go shopping on the Miracle Mile but you can’t find parking between 24th and 25th. What do you do? Park in the Southern Pacific right of way, naturally.

That’s 24th on top, 25th down below, Mission on the left and Capp on the right. Rosamunde now sits in the west side of the former tracks, and Foot Locker on the east side. And Killing My Lobster is doing a kickstarter to open up their theater space just to the south of the old tracks.

Zoom and enhance!

Given the less than precise angles of the parked cars, the train was obviously not running frequently in 1938 (though I do like to imagine it barreling through and knocking cars asunder.) In fact, Southern Pacific would give up the line by 1948.  Note that the railroad was originally built in the 1860s and pre-dated the Mission street grid by a few years.  It took its jaunty angle to avoid two horse race courses that were in the area.

BurritoVision ON:

And a wider BV view. (The photos were taken at different angles so it doesn’t align as nicely as I’d like.)

Hmm, just noticed the arches over 25th and Mission:

I knew there were iron arches over Fillmore that were torn down during WWII, but not on Mission.

Anyway, do thank David Rumsey and the SFPL for being awesome. And I wrote more about it over here if you didn’t see it already.

Surely you’ve wondered what went on at all those run-down theaters lining Mission street before they were converted to dollar stores, parking structures, and termite farms. Well now is your chance to find out. Jack Tillmany, a San Francisco transit and theater historian, will be hosting a free presentation tomorrow, Wednesday 10/19 7pm at the Bernal Heights Public Library.

During the golden years of moviegoing in the first half of the 20th century, just about everybody went at least once a week. Ten thousand people a day went to the movies in San Francisco on Mission Street alone. Most of the theatres are gone now, or, worse yet, sitting vacant and abandoned as sad reminders of what once was, but will never be again. But a couple of them have been in business for more than a century and continue to survive and, let us hope, prosper.

Transit and movie theatre historian Jack Tillmany’s presentation offers a guided tour of just about all of them, from 16th Street through the Mission and Bernal Heights to Daly City, in black and white and in color, along with the many streetcar lines that provided transportation on San Francisco’s longest thoroughfare. Best of all, the presentation is free — and all attendees will receive a free, authentic souvenir of the streetcar era!

Interesting history talks sound like the perfect companion to Whiskey Wednesdays at Bender’s! Unofficial after-party?

[via Bernalwood]