Mission Mission

Check it out! Those big eyes that used to hang out between the “GIANT” and the “VALUE” in the Giant Value sign have migrated to New York’s Lower East Side! And they’ve hooked up with a pair of nostrils!

P.S. I did some research. The artist goes by End War.

Photo by Bat Bombs.

P.P.S. End war!

(original photo via Telstar Logistics)

In the comment section of the Cinema Latino / Crown Theater article, reader “like a fox” brings us this interesting tidbit in my response to my plaintive wail, “Could you imagine something like Oakland’s The Fox in the Mission?”

Your wish is granted. The *other* theater across the street – New Mission – is slated to become a music venue – with the Fox being the model. Unfortunately, the New Mission doesn’t have the architectural splendor of the Fox. Don’t know how the funding or permitting is going, sorry.

Gus Murad’s club and height limits are well known, but the idea of a Fox-like entity in the Mission is a new one to me.  Any readers with more information?

(More Mission Street theater history porn here, and more pictures inside of New Mission here.)

Building upon the deluge of nostalgic Dolores Park photos that surfaced earlier this week, MM reader friscolex clued us in to the gold mine that is the San Francisco Public Library History Center Blog.  And what a gold mine it is!  Here we have a photo of Mission High School students eating lunch in Dolores Park in 1958.  Myriad interesting things here. 

First of all, these “high school” students look a lot older than most high school students I see around these days.  In fact, they look older than most undergrads!  Perhaps they’re not really high school students at all but are merely playing the part a la James Van Der Beek.

Furthermore, I’m not quite sure, but all of these students look pretty white.  Although this may just mean that they weren’t on the city champion soccer team, I’ve got a feeling that most of their fellow classmates were white as well.  50 years later, it seems that things are a little different.

But that’s not all from the SFPL HC!  Check out these amazing early (1965) designs for BART trains!  Supposedly, BART promised “trains automatically timed to arrive at stations every 90 seconds during rush hours, [and] BART is guaranteeing everyone of its passengers a seat[!!!]“  I wonder how that worked out.

Nevertheless, the SFPL History Center is a gold mine.  Be sure to check it out and support it however you can!

Previously:

Dolores Park 20 Years Ago

More Photos of Dolores Park 20 Years Ago

Mission Soccer: A San Francisco Dynasty

I took the day off and found myself near ground zero of Whaletastrophe 2010. In case you haven’t heard, a gashed, likely endangered, whale washed up on the shore of Ocean Beach yesterday. The whale is located near Great Highway and Judah street, and it’s a must-see for anyone with a morbid curiosity for dead marine mammals. I was surprised to find that the smell wasn’t so bad after all. The tidepools at Sutro Baths smell much, much worse.

So what exactly do you do with a dead whale, you ask? No, you don’t blow it up with dynamite. Why does everyone think that, anyway?

Turns out you get a bunch of tractors out there, dig a huge hole, and give it a proper burial:

And I guess if you’re an aspiring street artist named “RATS”, you would tag it:

No word on how they are going to drag it into the hole without the thing falling apart and spilling guts everywhere, but I assume the guys on the job are used to this sort of thing.

Oh, thanks LZ. Astute analysis.

Although, over the summer I was invited to some kind of hoe-down at a place on Guerrero between 26th and 25th, so there might be a northward creep in effect.

Police seemed perplexed as to how this Mercedes actually ended up on its side here at an auto garage on the corner of Mission and Ocean, but any Grand Theft Auto veteran will tell you that it happens all the time.

A quick glance around the scene revealed some clues.  The bent parking meter and pole hinted at some sort of badly-miscalculated shortcut attempt, which, judging from the scattered debris, must have been undertaken at considerable velocity.

Still, not quite something you see everyday.

Sexpigeon knows what they’re up to.

Marc found a little present today:

A top-drawer junkie whore left me an extra special gift pack in our sidewalk planter on little Adair Street:

Looks like someone was all dolled up and ready to party every which way with harm reduction.  They even rolled their own chemical free nicotine Buglers.  Clearly this was left from the pimp’s special reserve ho because the shit was so good she forgot she even had anything.

I hear Longshot Magazine hid 12 of these all over the Mission and will be releasing clues on the hour on where to find them! (No, not really)

Recent J-school graduate, Mission Local alumni, and black & white photographer extraordinaire Armand Emamdjomeh is at the De Young!

…the short video I made as part of my thesis project, New Mission, is going to be showing as part of the Friday Film Night at the De Young Cultural Encounters series! It’s basically a slideshow of my Mission photography, with little bits of video, all to the narration of the poem “In Twenty Years” by Marcella Ortiz.

It’s kind of an ode to the neighborhood and the character that it has now.

It will be part of this very Friday Film Night at the De Young Cultural Encounters. The event is free!  (Facebook event page here if that’s how you roll.)

If you can’t make it, Armand’s work will also be at SF City Hall on the 16th at the Night/Light exhibit.

(Someone get this man a job so he can stay in the Mission, OK?)

Somebody erected this fertility monument on Shotwell and 19th. Note how when the sun is at it’s peak elevation in the summer sky, the shadow cast by this masterpiece forms a perfectly-rendered ball sack.

This may be the most important dong discovery since the Cerne Abbas Giant.

[Photo and title Jeff D., Spots Unknown]