Mission Mission

Youtube user nico1001nico made a nice short documentary about Mission gentrification from the perspective of the small business owners. For the most part, they don’t really seem to mind the changes happening. There’s less crime, better business, and more diversity.

Micah from Black & Blue delivers the most scathing line, when asked what she’d like to see changed: “More low income housing, more services available to the poor, and less trust fund babies moving into the neighborhood.”

The most baffling quote comes from Connie, the Latina business owner, describing her dream of 24th becoming the next Noe Valley. For serious?

Previously:

Dregs One on Gentrification

Update: Video removed by the creator. Probably pissed off too many trust fund babies.

Update 2: Aaand it’s back. Not sure what’s changed:

Sounds like the 1911 Mission had it going on for New Year’s, especially compared to those poopy Market St or Fillmore parties.

“What added to the color and the light and life and tumult was the fact that it was a genuine street carnival that reigned, most of the New Year eve merrymakers being in masquerade costume.”

“Gipsy maids and flaring Carmena, toreadors, strolling minstrels, peasant lads and highland lassies,  some of every nation under the sun, nuns and monks and saucy flower girls, in with those garbed in every day street wear, went to the making up of the throng, 30,000 strong, that turned Mission Street last night into a howling, laughing, cheering, exultant mob.”

So basically like today’s Carnaval, but at midnight. I am sure that would go well these days.

Another 1911 novelty: “Police Kept At Ease By Lack of Rowdyism”.  Unlike, say, this city winning a major sporting championship.

Click for the entire article — Mission excerpt below. Oh, for the simple days of Queen Julia.

Happy New Year!

[Photo by Zoë Banks]

Happy New Year!

Previously:

Do-It-Yourself Yellow Journalism Machine

Shark Week

Before I go into the top Mission Mission post of 2010, I’d like to tell a story.

I didn’t have a dog or cat growing up. Instead, my parents got us a pair of hamsters. While these little critters aren’t blessed with the talents of learning tricks, episodic memory, or establishing meaningful relationships with their masters, you can put them in a ball and watch them roll around for a couple of hours of entertainment.

We never named them. One was a shy, chill hamster, and the other one was basically a big asshole. At first the bully beat up on chill guy. Then the chill hamster got pretty big and kept the other one in check. This was a good time that I refer to as the “time of serenity”.

The bully hamster didn’t take to this arrangement and eventually started putting in extra hours on the wheel working out. He got stronger, faster, and meaner. When the time was right, he came back in full force. Thus, “the reign of horror” began. The brutal beatings occurred on an nightly basis, culminating in the bully hamster gnawing off the genitals of the other.

My point is, there are some things that can’t be unseen. A hamster’s disfigured, bloody stump of a crotch is one of them. This year in the Mission, a lady shitting on her house is another.

1. Mission Resident Shits on Her Own Apartment Building

Short story: An anonymous reader caught his upstairs neighbor shitting in the alley of her apartment building.

Long story: When this one showed up in our inbox, we had a lot of questions: Who shits on her own house? Who takes pictures of someone shitting her own house? Did she, you know, wipe? These are important philosophical questions.

Perhaps more baffling than the actual act was the reaction by some of our commenters to the effect of, “Hey! Stop picking on this lady for having a bad day.”

Bad day? I mean, I’ve had to go pretty bad on the road a few times but I’ve always managed to deal with it in a socially acceptable manner. One would think that when you’ve made it to your house, you’ve done the hard part; getting to your bathroom is cake. But I’ll spare you any more, the entire scenario was dissected thoroughly with the 80+ comments here.

Little did we know that this story would captivate San Francisco, even earning us an award for “SF’s Best Photo/Twitpic” in the SF Weekly’s 2010 Web Awards (you can see our fitting reaction at sexpigeon). To use a tired cliche, “only in San Francisco” could a photo of an obeise lady dropping a deuce be considered “the best” of anything.

In the end, I’m not sure what we should take away from this. However, I will say this: we probably need more public bathrooms in the Mission, and less people with high-resolution digital cameras.

Happy new year!

This week, Mission Mission brings you a recap of the top 5 posts of 2010. Can you guess the number one post of the year?

Hey, I already told you it’s not BART Boner. Is it Details on the American Apparel Hearing (NSFW)? Almost. That was the number one post in terms of traffic. But dude, that is so 2009. American Apparel was already chased out of the Mission by an angry mob who was probably wearing their stuff the whole time. Not that you care, the real reason you looked at that post was the hot pixxx of Sasha Grey when it popped up in Google. That’s ok, we wont tell.

3. San Francisco Has Banksy Fever!

Right before Banksy’s first film “Exit Through the Gift Shop”  premiered across the US, all sorts of Banksyesque street art started popping up in all the major cities including NYC, Detroit, and San Francisco. The Mission was hit a couple of times during this promotional surge at Mission and Sycamore (see above) and Valencia between 19th and 20th above Amnesia.

Initially, there was doubt about whether or not the pieces were authentic. Commenters battled it out while other pieces popped up in Chinatown, North Beach, SoMa, and even Alcatraz. Everyone suddenly thought graffiti was just swell. Camera clutching tourists loitered in the middle of Valencia street. Reports came in that he had a private shopping session Self Edge and had stayed in the Mission for 4 days. So apparently Banksy likes Mexican food, gentrification, and really expensive uncomfortable jeans that you’re not supposed to wash for a year.

Inevitably, the works were augmented, defaced, and mocked by other local street artists. Local business owners saw the tourist potential of keeping the pieces pristine and inadvertently got themselves in the art restoration field. This brought up the tired debate as to what constitutes legitimate street art and petty vandalism. Meanwhile, Banksy watched it all go down from his luxury secret lair and LOL’ed.

Banksy’s film is now on Netflix, by the way, and he insists it’s not a prank.

2. Lady Gaga Causing a Scene at Rosamunde

We’ve had our share of celebrity sightings in the Mission this year. To name a few: Glee lady, Molly Ringwald, Margaret Cho, Dave Chappelle, and Steve Jobs.

The one that topped our charts was Lady Gaga’s unexpected appearance at the new Rosamunde location in the Mission. It started as a rumor, but was pretty much confirmed when pictures and first hand accounts came in. She was allegedly in search of an authentic Mission burrito, but got sidetracked when she saw a sign advertising “sausage”. This amused her enough to stop in, confirming that the pop star is, in fact, a 12 year old boy.

L. Gaga ordered white wine and did not actually stuff a sausage in her mouth. She bullshitted with the staff and admired homemade jewelry for over two hours while being reminded by her bodyguards about her dinner reservation at somewhere fancy. The Rosamunde staff urged her to check out El Farolito for that burrito she craved. With that she left. Perhaps to go to El Farolito where, if it’s anything like Flour and Water, she was told wait in line like everyone else.

Previously:

Top 5 of ’10: #5: Livin’ La Bebida Loca; #4 KKKontroversy

This week, Mission Mission brings you a recap of the top 5 posts of 2010. Can you guess the number one post of the year?

If you guessed BART Boner, then you’re wrong! That was posted in 2008 so it doesn’t count. Although, admittedly it’s still up there. Probably because we make way too many off-hand jokes re-linking it. We really should stop doing that. After this post, I mean.

5. FDA to ban Four Loko Nationwide

It used to be at every corner store, now you can only find it in the stockpile under Andrew Sarkarati’s coffee table. Four Loko became national sensation among party people in 2010. Why? It was cheap, first of all. In this economy we all need to cut corners wherever we can. It was also ironic, which is apparently an excellent reason to do anything this year. Perhaps most importantly, it’s loaded with alcohol. This malt beverage contains about twice the alcohol as your typical brew-dog and had a flavor that can only be described as carbonated liquified jello shots.

So why is the government and media being such a drag, man? The stuff is a allegedly marketed to kids. Check out all those fruity flavors and colorful packaging! They might as well serve that swill out of foil-lined bags like Capri Sun. Our own Ariel Dovas even saw the a youngster going loco over Loko on MUNI. The idea of kid-friendly alcoholic beverages isn’t exactly anything new. When I was a young pup trying to fit in, I thought beer was totally gross. The solution? Zima. Dizgusting.

So farewell to Four Loko, we hardly knew you. Say hi to Sparks for us in drinky heaven.

4. Spurned Scenester Sullies Sightly Street Art

Local tagger KKKatie is no stranger to controversy, what with the whole scribbling quasi-racist stuff on public and private property. She also apparently doesn’t care much for our 25th president William McKinley. That is, like, so anti-American.

This year she drew the most ire in the Mission when she enhanced a Chris Lux mural with her own artistic vision inspired by what you might see scrawled on the door of a high school bathroom stall. Apparently there was some kind of beef between the two. The mural was restored in one day, but still, this marked the beginning of the end for KKKatie. She was condemned by the street art community and her friends. Finally, at Bay to Breakers, she was caught allegedly spray painting on a dude and threatening to accuse him of rape if he did anything about it. In the end, she was acquitted of any actual hate crime charges, but got slapped with 11 counts of vandalism.

Of course, as with anyone you put in the spotlight for a bit, KKKatie has her fans, crediting her as some kind of disutopian, punk-rock folk hero. But most of us think she’s more likely a chemically imbalanced young lady off her meds. I suppose only she (and perhaps her lawyer) knows for sure.

Ever wonder what the Mission looked like before “all those CCA taggers and fixie kooks” arrived?  Well, MM reader Eric Shea was kind enough to pass along this video, which he got from his buddy Joe Bay, who presumably got it from creator Patrick Gleason.

Check it out for some neat High8 footage of skating through the Mission in 1994 (around the same time that Fugazi would routinely play shows in Dolores Park).

Link:  http://vimeo.com/14287360

It happens every year, all over. Reader Ross S. sends us this video he shot of some folks burning a tree in the street. (Thanks Ross!)

He also suggests that:

[A] public service announcement regarding when it is ok to burn things in the street (world series win) and when it isn’t (any other time) is in order.

That does sound helpful. When is it okay to burn things in the street? Though this seems a lot safer than burning a mattress in a crowd of hundreds of drunkenly excited fans. It’s probably never “okay”, if you’re really talking about a PSA, but you’ll do it anyway, so it’s always good to be safe while performing illegal acts of anarchy. Anyway, I always thought the beach was the spot to take all of the old Christmas trees. Stack ‘em up and build a super tree. Or just join Danger Ranger. (whoever that is)

One thing we should definitely avoid is leaving a burning tree on someone’s doorstep.

I’d like to also take this opportunity to wonder aloud about shooting video portrait-style, instead of landscape. I know we watch this stuff on our computers, and not the TV, but media still tends to be oriented wider rather than taller. I don’t think anyone prefers the pillarboxed look (seen above), yet people do tend to shoot this way with their phones. Do we need to make room for the long and narrow format? Or should we make people feel stupid so they conform to the old standards?

SFist Editor Brock Keeling made a rare visit to the Mission last night, and was struck by this tender plea.

So, what do you think? Should we lose the frogs and make this guy our mascot?