Mission Mission

“There was a woman heckling the poor painter about destroying art,” says our pal Jess who walked by just now.

Yeah, that’s a shame. But…. RHEA’S!!!!

From the invite:

Kick your Labor Day weekend off right! AMERICAN TRIPPS returns to RICKSHAW STOP for a night of Berlin-style ping pong, foosball, skeeball, dancing, drinking, romancing, and general merriment!

TRISTES TROPIQUES (of Haçeteria fame) will be on the decks, spinning a vinyl-only selection of hits by DAVID BOWIE and DAVID BYRNE (whose band TALKING HEADS will figure prominently into the proceedings) and a number of related acts.

RSVP and invite your friends! Oh and RSVP here for free beer!

King of Oakland Ryan Christopher Parks and his rock band B. Hamilton make another rare appearance in the Mission tonight. Have a listen:

RSVP and invite your friends!

You already knew that the housing situation in SF and the Mission in particular was so bad that people have resorted to paying for Facebook ads in order to find a place to live, but this utterly amazing Craigslist room vacancy post is sure to depress even the most optimistic apartment seeker:

I have a shitty room available that no other people in the house want, hence the ad on CL.
I figure I can charge you more so the existing roommates can all pay less. I’ve actually been here for 8 years, so I’ll be making money off your rent.
It’s about 8×6, has a window facing a brick wall, and has no closet. The closet is down the hall, down a flight of stairs, … ah hell it’s in the garage.
Also, the room is not really a room, it’s half of a double parlour and your door is a sliding one that doesn’t close all the way. You can hear your roommate on the other side think.
We’re having an open house, so if you really like talking about yourself and giving us your life story while other strangers are present, you’ll be in your element.
One of our roommates is out of town, we would like you to skype with him a few days from now when we’ve picked some people out. Then after that we will narrow it down again to a select few (10) and meet next week for round two. We don’t have a life so we welcome the chance to have people over that show interest in us and praise our wonderful abode and everything about us, whether it’s sincere or not. Hey, a couple of us guys are single, so this could be a chance for us to score some dates. I don’t think that’s creepy at all.
We’d like your facebook and linkedin info. We feel that we can tell what kind of person you are and what you’ll be like, just from looking at how many friends you have online. There’s never been a better way to get to know someone.
Send us an email or go buy a lottery ticket – chances of getting the room are roughly the same.

Obviously it’s not real (I hope), but having gone through the soul-crushing Mission housing search on Craigslist myself a while back, I can tell you with complete confidence that it is extremely close to the truth.

(Thanks Jason!)

Panorama by Joe Bunny. Thanks, Joe.

It was actually local photographer and blogger Shawn Clover, and there’s lots more where this came from. Here’s how it’s done:

To put these photos together, I first create a catalog of historical photos that look like they have potential to be blended. Unfortunately most of these photos end up on the digital cutting room floor because there’s simply no way to get the same photo today because either a building or a tree is in the way. Once I get a good location, I get everything lined up just right. My goal is to stand in the exact spot where the original photographer stood. Doing this needs to take into account equivalent focal length, how the lens was shifted, light conditions, etc. I take plenty of shots, each nudged around a bit at each location. Just moving one foot to the left changes everything.

Read on for more story and lots more photographic mashups.

[via Burrito Justice]

My buddy Jim is visiting the Mission from NYC this week to record some drums on an album our pal is producing, and it only took one night for him to get personally acquainted with our unique denizens.  What follows is a paraphrased account of what went down early Wednesday morning:

After leaving your place we [meaning Jim and our other friend Morgan] were walking back to where we were staying on 15th and Mission, keeping an eye out for a liquor store that might still be open.  As we were approaching the 16th and Mission intersection, some guy just kind of appears and starts yelling really loudly at the top of his lungs, just saying basic crazy shit.  We tried to give him a wide berth, but he sort of approached us as we were passing.

In the blink of an eye, the guy reached out and seemed to sucker punch me on the shoulder as he yelled, “Get the fuck out of my way!”  It felt kind of weird and as I looked at my shoulder, I realized my shirt was torn and there was some blood.  That’s when I noticed that the guy was holding a huge switch-blade.  He then started swinging wildly at us, but we were able to dodge the blade and get some distance.  The crazy guy, still yelling at the top of his lungs, then went to some of the other people chilling by the BART stop and started swinging his knife at them.

These guys didn’t seem to appreciate that, and one of them started swinging his cane at the knife-wielder.  Another guy threw a trashcan at him, and pretty soon they had him on the ground and were kicking him.  We were afraid they might kill the lunatic, so Morgan called the police who arrived swiftly and approached with weapons drawn.  Luckily they were able to take control of the situation without shooting anyone, although one of the officer’s hands was slashed by the guy with the knife and was bleeding profusely.

Me?  I consider myself highly lucky to have gotten away with just a scratch, and will probably be extra cautious about keeping my distance from crazy yelling dudes in the future.  If that guy had been just a few inches taller, his initial hit would have been at my jugular instead of my shoulder.  But seriously, motherfuckers in SF are waaaaaaaaaaaaaay crazier than folks in NYC!

Wow, we’re glad you’re okay, Jim!  For future reference, that 16th and Mission corner is probably the last place you want to be at 2am.  Be careful out there everyone!

Allegedly.

From our anonymous source, who’s at work in a department store in the mall downtown:

an officer in uniform was shopping with her mom and they watched her pocket some costume jewelry and last i heard they stopped her and called the police, aka her coworkers.

And regarding whether our source was sure it was SFPD:

100% positive. badge, gun, the works.

Crummy.

UPDATE: This post has been edited to protect the anonymity of our source.

[via Dear Mom]

Somebody stop that U-Haul!