Mission Mission

Our pal Sarah recently “retired” to Oakland but realized that the only way she could get her SF friends to visit would be to educate them about all the rad things the East Bay shares with the city, so she constructed this comprehensive compendium of comparisons between the various bars, restaurants, and other fun that each side has to offer.  Even your groceries are covered:

Rainbow Grocery (The Mission) / Berkeley Bowl (Berkeley)

Can you imagine Rainbow but twice as large, half as expensive, and with a fantastic meat and seafood selection? If not, go visit Berkeley Bowl, or its newer location, Berkeley Bowl West. The Bowl is an East Bay staple, and can satisfy every hippie, health nut, hipster, and politically conscious bone in your body.

She’s got an Oakland answer for everything from Bender’s and Bi-Rite to Toronado and Tartine, so if you’ve ever been the slightest bit reluctant to venture to the other side, please do read on.

A pile found on 14th and Folsom. There’s a story here . . .

As many of us have suspected, the oddly-shaped Clooney’s generates its own space-time bubble. Fortunately we have managed to capture it in GIF format.

If you are not thoroughly confused on what you are seeing, you should be. Black and white = 1938 Clooney’s, color = 2012 Clooney’s. On different intersections.

Around 1951, the weirdly angled apartments atop Clooney’s were jacked up on a truck and moved to 25th & Valencia from 30th & San Jose Ave. The SFPL happens to have a picture of proto-Clooney’s from 1927.

Here’s another GIF that shows how San Jose Ave doubled in size westward — the southbound lanes ate the eastern side of the block.

Much more on the Cloonification of Valencia & 25th over on Burrito Justice, including the history of O’Reilly’s, the bar that predated Clooney’s back to the late 1800′s.

We’ve got more bummer news to report in 2013, although not quite on the same tragic level as the earlier fire and fatal car crash, but at least this one comes with a delicious reward:

I figure it’s a longshot, but someone stole my beloved bright-yellow green glow-in-the-dark bike while I was out at dinner tonight! The bike was kind of my baby/I had it locked to my older crappier one and a railing in my apartment building.

If you/your awesome readership and friends could keep on the look-out for it, I’m offering a cash reward/eternal gratitude/a lifetime supply of homemade ginger beer for it’s safe return!

That’s a lot of Moscow Mules!  Let’s hope it turns up!

2 cars crash in San Francisco’s Mission District-reports:2 dead-massive police presence twitter.com/TerryMcSweeney…

— TerryMcSweeney (@TerryMcSweeney) January 1, 2013

Mission Local has more:

A car collision on 21st Street and South Van Ness Avenue Tuesday at about 8 a.m. led to the death of two people, and left one in life-threatening condition at San Francisco General Hospital, SFPD media relations officer Carlos Manfredi said.

Police responded to a call of a shooting from a black four-door vehicle near Valencia Gardens at about 7:45 a.m. The officers saw the vehicle a few blocks away and attempted a traffic stop . . .

 

UPDATE: A reader sent us a pic of the car against the liquor store.

UPDATE 2: The pedestrian killed at the scene has been identified as 26 year old Francisco Gutierrez.

First meal of the year at Mission Chinese! Yum. twitter.com/PadmaLakshmi/s…

— Padma Lakshmi (@PadmaLakshmi) January 1, 2013

Last night after midnight counts.

(According to statistics and stuff.)

5. Beerito! (Or: How to smuggle a beer into a music festival by disguising it as a burrito)

4. Louis C.K. performs secret Saturday night show in SF, picks up everybody’s bar tabs

3. 122-year-old gravestone washes up on Ocean Beach

2. Emoji man giving the finger and jacking off onto emoji woman’s face and tits

1. Peeing out the window of a moving Muni bus (aka Princess Buspiss)

Happy New Year, y’all!

Woohoo! Last year’s Rice Paper Scissors New Year’s Day Brunch was the best meal I had in all of 2012 — and I had a lot of great meals in 2012. So, look forward to this:

We’re popping up for our annual New Year’s Day Brunch at Whiz Burgers, the iconic burger joint on the corner of 18th and South Van Ness avenue.

On the menu: fried egg banh mi’s and pho and Vietnamese coffee and everything else to make life feel alright (and maybe even awesome.)

Excited to start the new year with y’all.

Valerie + Katie + Zoe

Plus, you’ve probably never eaten at Whiz Burgers. What a way to break your streak!

RSVP and invite your friends! See the full menu here.

[Photo by Telstar Logistics]

Consider helping out our neighbors affected by Saturday morning’s fire. From the Capp and 23rd Fire Victim’s Support Facebook page:

Clothing donations are already coming in. Thank you!

New drop off time added for 8 a.m. – 10 a.m. on Monday, 12/31, at 1050 South Van Ness Ave.

You can still drop off donations tonight … (yes, New Year’s Eve, 12/31/12) between 8pm-10pm also at 1050 South Van Ness.

On 1/2/13 or later, you can bring donations to 938 Valencia St. between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.

As I said earlier, the Dolores Shelter Program will make arrangements to get these donations to the affected people as soon as possible.

(Thanks, Laurie!)

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