Mission Mission

The condo construction chaos at the New Mission Theater site is displacing the Mission Community Market for a while, but it might be for the best since they get to move over to 22nd Street between Mission and Valencia, which gets a hell of a lot more foot traffic and just generally has a lot more going on than Bartlett between 21st and 22nd, where the market usually happens. Mission Local reports:

Hasel Vasquez, who runs the perfume stand in Anita’s Beauty Salon on 22nd echoed the overall sentiment: “Not only will it help the market – it will help us,” she said referring to the new foot traffic.

Vasquez said the market’s location on Bartlett is “too tucked away” and the move closer to Mission Street will give Latinos “better access.”

Read on.

['gram by @malenarose]

Watch:

[via Mission Local]

Watch:

(Thanks, Allie!)

As Andrew mentioned a few weeks back, beloved local indie rockers Social Studies are playing every Monday in the Mission all month long! Here’s this week’s lineup, presented by Mission Mission and our pals at BFF.fm:

Social Studies
FOLI (members of Social Studies, Record Release)
The Tropics
DJ sets by Fortune & OneMoHit of Make It Funky SF and BFF.fm

Mon, November 18, 2013
Doors: 8:00 pm / Show: 9:00 pm
Brick & Mortar Music Hall
San Francisco, CA
$6.00

RSVP and invite your friends!

This is exactly why the #GoogleBus is a good thing. @MissionMission @SFist @SFExa #tech #smartcities #SanFrancisco http://t.co/FrN61vjtsc

— Adrian Covert (@AdrianCovert) November 18, 2013

Let’s see:

[GIF by The Atlantic]

Lookin’ good, gents!

P.S. Can you believe it’s been 10 whole years since Matt was almost mayor?

[Photo by Dennis]

One of the people who keep talking during the show sat down to look at her phone behind me. I've been farting on her.

— Chelsea Otakan (@chexee) November 18, 2013

From Modern Luxury’s San Francisco Magazine profile on the history of the Delfina empire:

If Delfina played a role in the fancification of the Mission, what do you miss most about the good ole days?

Craig: Don’t get me started on the word gentrification. I don’t miss anything about the good ole days. I don’t miss crime and squalor.

I wonder if Craig thinks that he solved the underlying problems that lead to crime and squalor, or if he’s content with being a force that shifted it into someone else’s neighborhood.

I lived at 18th and Dolores through much of the nineties and 18th and Guerrero for much of the two thousands, and I’m not sure he did much more than open some high end restaurants.

Katie & Brittany checked out Peter and the Starcatcher at The Curran and found that they could enjoy it more if they were able to meet the play where was, rather than trying to bring the play to them. They really liked it! Because they really do like theater, and they want you to as well! Here’s their report:

San Francisco, and particularly the Mission, has been called Neverland by some. A place where people go when they don’t want to grow up. So when we heard there was a play that explained the origins of Neverland and the Peter Pan story, we knew we had to check it out. So off to SHN’s Curran Theater we went to see their latest play Peter and the Starcatcher by Rick Elice (based on a children’s book by Dave Berry and Ridley Person by the same name) in its first stop of its national tour.

Brittany: I’m just going to go out and say it, I liked the show.

Katie: Say it loud say it proud!

B: I wish it had been in a more intimate space. I think it would have been a blow-my-mind-amazing-play if it had been in a more intimate space . . . It took me longer to get into it because the Curran is so big, but I still liked it.

K: I liked it, it grew on me. At first I was like, “What the hell is this? There are actors talking at me really fast, are they just going to tell me a story?” For me the Second Act was what did it for me, it was great.

B: Right! I was so sad our entire row, and half the row behind us, left at intermission. I don’t know why they left, because it definitely was not a show that deserved to be walked out on, but they really missed out on the Second Act.

K: They really did, If I had left after the First Act, I would have been like “Meh, that was a cute children’s bed-time story written for adults, and I liked the stage design.” But after the Second Act I was like, “OMG this was so good, the actors were so talented, and this was so entertaining.”

B: I loved the creativity and smartness of this show. The script has lots of fun puns and wordplay. Definitely multi-layered humor for kids and adults. The staging was so creative. I liked that they didn’t sing a lot too. Sometimes musicals go too far. I thought they used music really well.

K: Yeah their transitions were very well done, and they used music really purposefully. The guy who played Black Stash (John Sanders) made the show for me, he rocked the Second Act. When he threw down the “Yeah, and I bet your milkshake brings all the boys to the yard” I lost it. I think my adultness really took over in the first act, and then for the second act I was like, “Fuck it, I am just going to turn myself over to this play”. Once I did that I had a great time.

B: It’s fun when theatre can be that explosion of fun, imagination and creativity. It lets you feel like a kid again, which doesn’t get to happen enough in the default world. I love that a rope can be a wave, and a rubber glove can be a bird, and this play gives you permission to think those things and go on this journey.

The Verdict: Go see it! If you lack all imagination, hate kids, Peter Pan and everything fun, you’re probably not reading this blog anyway. [They underestimate our commenters! - Ed.] So just go see it.

The Drama Talk: Peter and the Starcatcher the play is smart, witty, and totally ties up all those Peter Pan origin questions you always had. Peter and the Starcatcher the touring show is delightful. Even though it has Broadway production quality, it falls back on the barebones of children’s theatre imagination for the staging, which is a welcome respite from high production quality shows that spoon feed the audience cinematic images. The company is tight, and fast. Jokes and puns fly a mile a minute. It’s nice to have a show that’s so fun, but still requires the audience to use their brains.

The Drinks: After a fanciful, and nautical night at the theatre (the show has all the trappings of any Peter Pan, pirates, mermaids, etc.) we thought a bar with tiki punch influences
(which was also listed as one of the top hotel bars in SF) was probably in order. We chose the The Burritt Room for our after-show cocktails. Katie got a Knickerbocker La Monsieur because that sounds fun, and Brittany got the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club because it’s a boat drink. Both were a great conclusion to a Wednesday night of Drama Talk & Drinks.

Peter and the Starcatcher runs until December 1st at SHN’s Curran Theater. For opening week they had Rush Tickets available for the show if you got there two hours before curtain, so check back on the SHN site for more promotions like that. There were also Gold Star tickets available for this show last week, at the time of writing that deal expired too, but that doesn’t mean that there might not be more.

Even though the SF bike coalition has put a ton of painstaking work into creating a thoroughly-detailed bicycle map of the city, it can appear pretty daunting to anyone glancing at it while trying to plan a riding route, and just plain overwhelming to newbie riders looking to adopt cycling as their primary means of transportation.  Fortunately, longtime cyclist Mat Kladney noticed this and decided to create a map that makes bicycling from one end of the city to the other look as simple as following a straight line:

“Need to get from Downtown to the Bernal Heights? Just follow the Blue Line,” he says. “This simplicity will re-frame the existing San Francisco bicycle lanes as the San Francisco Bicycle System and will help convince more people to saddle up and take to the streets.”

Instead of contoured lines denoting hill grade or the inclusion of every single city street, the map ends up looking like a subway system map, with popular routes like Valencia’s “Green Wave” called out.  So, the next time you’re trying to figure out the perfect route to that bike picnic at Baker Beach, just pick a color or two a ride!

[Link to map, via The Atlantic]