Mission Mission

Cheap Time rules! They used to tour with Jay Reatard and they’re responsible for a couple of the best live shows I’ve ever seen in my life and they’re headlining the Knockout tonight! Also, they wrote the best song ever:

really feeling the bart operator BEGGING everyone to "stay in the train and be safe" so that we can leave the station.

— andmarywaslike (@andmarywaslike) February 4, 2014

direct quote: "please stay back from the yellow line. yes, you. you near the end of the cars. you're hurting my feelings."

— andmarywaslike (@andmarywaslike) February 4, 2014

Aww.

Film photography & gifs have a lot of common. Graininess, sure, they both have that in spades, but they’re also underdog formats. There are easier ways to capture a moment, and less bloated ways to make that moment move again, but these media just doesn’t know when to quit, and that’s why I find them so charming.

I was telling Allan about my transition from smartphones to film cameras, and my current obsession of mixing digital/analog together. He offered to let me share my year long 3D City project here on Mission Mission. Each week I’ll share some new work along with little bits of info on the camera and film I used (for the photo nerds out there). These shots are from a roll of Arista Premium (a Tri-X knockoff) on my Nishika N8000.

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Mission Local reported over the weekend that plans have been submitted to the city that involve destroying the building and replacing it with a big condo complex. And then in the comments section:

Matt Shapiro, co-owner of Elbo Room, here. We are not going anywhere anytime soon…the building owners (close fiends of ours), submitted a proposal (which has to be public), but are not acting on it….I find it funny that no one bothered to check with us before writing their articles. [link]

Soooo, what’s the deal? Nobody seems to have any ideas why a building owner would go through the process of submitting such a proposal and then decide not to act on it.

[Photos from "Hot Faces" shoot outside Elbo Room, 2010]

UPDATE:

@missionmission Approvals will take 2/3 years, plus another year for permits & financing. So 2017, maybe. By then we could be in recession

— J.K. Dineen (@SFBIZjkdineen) February 3, 2014

[via Jen Gann]

[via xtina]

[via Darby]

YOU GUYS. The producers of Looking have been hearing our cries! Episode 3 kicks off with a seaman pun that would hold its own in Sex and the City world (where was that show set again?). If my only requirement as a serious television critic is to get a Samantha Jones-inspired pun once in a while, we’re off to a good start.

Here’s why the seaman: the episode begins with Patrick and coworker Owen boarding a docked ship in Alameda to celebrate the launch of a new video game called Naval Destroyer. Patrick meets large-eared Brit Kevin who he hits on unsuccessfully while playing video games, straddling a torpedo. We later discover Kevin could potentially be his new boss. (Note: Does Kevin have kind of a Ricky Gervais-but-hot vibe or am I just racist?)

SAMANTHA: The British are coming, the British are coming! (She’s having sex with a British guy in this one)

Patrick spends the rest of the episode trying to save face and figure out how to get on Kevin’s team while Kevin effs with him a bit (British people are awful!), including telling Patrick he’d been going through his internet history and he should lay off the OK Cupid and Manhunt. Of course, in the end, Patrick decides to take matters into his own hands, designs some bonus shit to show Kevin, only to find out he was going to be picked for the team anyway. Kevin is, nonetheless impressed: “Commitment looks good on you.”

Our other boys? Well, Agustin is fired from his job working for another artist for hating her shitty art. He drowns his sorrows in a piece of cake (READERS: Where?) and meets a cocky, Thor-like sex worker who tells him he’s like sooooo good at sex and makes like sooooo much money. Intrigued, Agustin considers this career path himself.

Meanwhile, our friend Dom with the Tom Selleck mustache decides (in a Bollywood dance class!) that it’s finally time to open his own restaurant, something about Portuguese chicken (fuck your Anglo chicken, Zuni!). We later see him cruising a sauna (SEXY PEOPLE: can you cruise a sauna?), where he befriends Lynn, owner of a floral shop on Castro, an “institution”, and mothereffing Scott Bakula looking not a day over 47 (Note: He’s 59 so way to go, Bak!).

SAMANTHA: I’d like to leap his quantum!
SAMANTHA: I’d like to get behind his candelabra! (She’s having sex with Scott Bakula in both of these)

I liked this episode, you guys. I think the show is starting to get its footing here, and it’s addressing some very San Francisco issues that haven’t much been addressed on TV. Being in your 20s or 30s and ponying up and deciding to do a thing in a city of Peter Pans is something that struck me; it’s difficult to do here vs. in NY or LA, where everyone’s basically just a dick about careers and/or stations in life all the time. “I don’t think either of us are very good at being who we think we are, maybe we should try a little harder,” Patrick says to Agustin. I felt it, dudes.

I am also very interested in the introduction of Lynn, the institution. The relationship between gays over 40ish and younger gays is not something I consider much as a boring straight girl, but I am intrigued: the political vs. liberated, there is a mutual respect but both have gone through different shit and have some unique shit to get over.

And finally, Looking is kind to San Francisco. I can’t tell you how underwhelmed I was by Woody Allen’s San Francisco in Blue Jasmine (BREAKING: Woody Allen hates gay people). Looking features our bars, restaurants, streets, even our public transportation prominently, we are all up in San Francisco and its beautiful views and I dig it.

SAMANTHA: If that’s what they call the San Francisco treat, I’ll take two, honey! (She’s having sex with a San Franciscan in this one)

Spotted in this episode: the Transamerica pyramid, the J-Church, a burrito, Valencia between 16th and 17th, a nonexistent Esta Noche Facebook page, BART, Nellie Street.

How would you feel if someone wanted to give you a cupcake?  Like, REALLY wanted to give you a cupcake, as our pal Jimmie relates:

This morning on Feb 1 around 9:45am a man tried to force his way into our house.  I was in the shower and my wife heard our doorbell ring.  Assuming it was the mailman, she opened the door, but found a shirtless white male, about 5’8″ tall with short brown hair and stubble.  He said “Oh hey!” and immediately tried to enter our home.  She pushed him out by forcing the door closed.  Soon after he rang the door bell again and said “I have a cupcake for you!”  By that time we had called 911 and the police showed up soon after.  The man had indeed left a cupcake on our doorstep but was nowhere to be found.  Other neighbors reported a stranger ringing their doorbells or knocking on their doors immediately prior to this event.

Watch your backs, people!

[Cupcake image]

Mission Local made a great new video with archival footage from 1974 and brought some of the people back to continue the interview in present day. More context and discussion on their site.