Mission Mission

Flickr user keightdee saw some dudes playing bike polo in one of Dolores Park’s tennis courts recently. Lots more photos in her photostream. Click thumbnails to enlarge.

San Francisco Art & Design Lover hips us to tomorrow’s festivities. Info on individual sellers here.

Update: Beth says, “[A]ll the shops are on 16th btwn Valencia & Guerrero or on Valencia btwn 16th and 17th.” Thanks, Beth!

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.

Southern Exposure needs an Associate Director:

Southern Exposure seeks a dynamic individual to fill the position of Associate Director. This is a full time, 40 hour a week, staff position with benefits. The Associate Director works with the Executive Director to manage and coordinate Southern Exposure’s membership program, annual auction, and SoEx’s Alternative Exposure Grant Program. The Associate Director plays a key administrative role in SoEx’s current fundraising campaign and organizing fundraising events. They manage day-to-day bookkeeping, including payables and receiveables. The Associate Director works collaboratively as a member of the SoEx team. This position offers an excellent opportunity for anyone interested in working in a creative and dynamic non-profit arts/arts administration environment at an organization entering into a period of exciting growth and change and an upcoming move to a new facility.

Opening Date: August 14, 2008
Deadline to submit application: September 19, 2008
Projected start date: October 2008

Full particulars here.

*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?

Today, my epic Midwestern road trip has brought me to Indianapolis. Fearing for my safety, my friend Bri (a real-live Indianan) sent me a link to a post on Take a Breather called “Indiana McCain and the Obama of Doom”:

Two nights ago, a friend (and Iraq War veteran) was walking down the sidewalk wearing an Obama 2008 shirt when a man, eating dinner with his wife looked up and said, “So, you’re a communist?”

That same night, a person in the bar shared this story with my friend: “I was wearing an Obama shirt in here the other night and three guys surrounded me and started harassing me about the shirt. Realizing I was outnumbered, I asked them what they would like me to do. They made me turn my shirt inside-out.”

Another recent evening, I was driving my mom’s car, which has an Obama bumper sticker on it. As I was using a drive-thru ATM, a truck pulled up behind me and began chanting Obama’s name out his window, but not in a good way. More like a tone that invoked the ghosts of the KKK. I didn’t look back, I just pulled away and acted like I didn’t hear them.

And then there’s this zinger, brought to light by an acquaintance: “I hope every racist person in America comes out and votes against Obama.”

Indiana is an interesting place.

Lots more analysis here. So yeah, I guess I won’t be donning the “Fuck Cars” t-shirt I picked up this afternoon in Bloomington until I get back to California. Thanks, Bri!

Everybody’s favorite internet cafe/place to get Mexican Coke, Redtap, has posted special recession hours. Haha. (Thanks, Alexandra!)

Evany, in a post titled Cafe Platitude (ha!), sums up everyone’s (most everyone’s) thoughts on everyone’s (most everyone’s) favorite neighborhood raw-food haunt:

Sadly their food is kind of tasty, jerks. But their whole shitty concept makes me so crabby, I refuse to interact with them. So like a kid getting someone to buy wine coolers at the 7-11, I sent my friend Megan (who speaks hippie) up to the Cafe Gratitude at the farmers market (where of course they have a booth), and she purchased me three I Am Insightfuls as I stood off to the side, trying not to faint from rolling my eyes so hard. As the guy handed back the change, he asked Megan, his face all punch-me-in-the-face-please serene, “So what core value do you care about most?”

Read the whole thing here.

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?

I saw one of these at the Louisville Zoo yesterday and it blew my mind and I wanted to share. Link to Maned Wolf entry on Wikipedia.

Photo by LoquaciousD