Mission Mission

The San Francisco Guardian Angels brought their stoic brand of street justice to the Mission on 9/17 and posted the patrol log today.

Did you think standing around in a line with your arms folded neatly is all it takes to be an Angel? Think again! They also do litter clean-up:

Same old story, the bad guys see us they run that way and they this way, but they leave and it calms down. But we just don’t leave that fast, the second team stays posted up at the BART STATION while the first team checks the alleys. First team then arrives back to the BART STATION to the second team to advise us, they pick up dirty needles and that the alley is all clear.

Special shout out to 16th St. Walgreen’s, everyone’s favorite crime-fighting resource:

Next we get to our rest stop WALGREEN’S, bathroom break, smoke break, and water break. If we did not do this or if we did not have this Resource, we could not stay out as long as we could.

Read the rest of their patrol log at the SF Guardian Angels blog.

Tomorrow night, Friday 9/24, at Coda on Mission and Duboce, a 14-piece supergroup of San Francisco bay area musicians are getting together for a some sets of good old Ray Charles music. The arrangements were done by guitarist Mike Irwin Johnson, of the local bebop group 8 Legged Monster. The band will be called, simply, RAY BAND.

I’m told that every female singer in town was interested in one of the three coveted Raelettes pantomiming backup singer spots. And who who wouldn’t be? They ended up with Allegra Bandy, Rashida Clendening, and Karen Fremont, who all look great in long gloves.

So who plays the part of Ray Charles? Well if you were to ask me to choose someone, I’d say the soul-dripping Lech Wierzynski from the California Honeydrops. Turns out I’m not alone. I don’t know how far Lech is going to take this role. Will he be wearing dark sunglasses and jerking spastically to the music? Will he stumble around after the show and feel up ladies wrists to determine whether or not they are hot enough to shack up with later? (It’s in the movie Ray, dude. Netflix it.)

The show starts at 10pm and costs 10 bucks. Tickets and more info here.

Update! Mike informs us that Lech isn’t Ray tonight. Instead, Dylan Germick of PLANET BOOTY will be filling the chair!

I took the day off and found myself near ground zero of Whaletastrophe 2010. In case you haven’t heard, a gashed, likely endangered, whale washed up on the shore of Ocean Beach yesterday. The whale is located near Great Highway and Judah street, and it’s a must-see for anyone with a morbid curiosity for dead marine mammals. I was surprised to find that the smell wasn’t so bad after all. The tidepools at Sutro Baths smell much, much worse.

So what exactly do you do with a dead whale, you ask? No, you don’t blow it up with dynamite. Why does everyone think that, anyway?

Turns out you get a bunch of tractors out there, dig a huge hole, and give it a proper burial:

And I guess if you’re an aspiring street artist named “RATS”, you would tag it:

No word on how they are going to drag it into the hole without the thing falling apart and spilling guts everywhere, but I assume the guys on the job are used to this sort of thing.

Forget what you think you know about flip-flops and shorts, Sex Pigeon thinks this is a winning outfit.

If you disagree, then you’re so behind the times. Enjoy your gangsta loony toons T-shirt and flannel shirt tied around your waist.

A lovely video of Oakland, by Conrad Tse. Doesn’t it look nice? Or maybe it’s just the fancy lens and soothing piano music. Either way, you’ll all be living there once your parents cut you off, so start getting to know it.

Mission Bicycle Company is hosting the first ever Mission Bicycle Festival on the weekend of 9/25. The event will feature a ride out to the Tour De Fat in Golden Gate Park, bike demos, and contests.

This may be particularly interesting to you Mission readers: at 1pm on Saturday 9/25 there will be a “10 Mission Secrets Bike Tour”! What kind of secrets, I wonder? The location of that sketchy flea market where you can buy back your stolen bike? That hidden warp zone that takes you to the top of Potrero hill? Guess you’ll just have to sign up for one of the limited spots to find out.

There will also be a track stand competition at 3pm on Sunday 9/26. The prize is a brand new Valencia frame set. So if watching a bunch of riders sit almost perfectly still is your idea of sport, be sure to check that out.

The flyer is here and you can get more info at Mission Bicycle Company. Oh by the way, they are having a sale wrapping up today where you can get up to $180 off a customized and likely effeminately-colored ride. Check out their facebook page for more info.

KevMo at Uptown Almanac hipped us to this beautiful video of the making of Tartine Bakery’s delicious loaves. It goes on to show two other folks following the Tartine recipes and baking on their own at a small cafe and in the home. The latter featured baker is non other than the delightful Marié Abe, accordion babe!

[Photo by Carla Leshne]

VatRat1 reminds us of Hamm’s beer and it’s SF past:

The Hamm’s brewery in San Francisco opened in 1954 at 1550 Bryant Street, close to the Seals baseball stadium. The brewery closed in 1972. In the early 1980′s, the beer vats were rented out to punk rock bands, and it was a used as music studios until the building was renovated and turned into offices.

Don’t believe him? Well check out this amazing article from foundsf.org, detailing the Austin thrash band Millions of Dead Cops (MDC)  moving into the abandoned San Francisco factory in the early ’80s and repurposing the actual beer vats as living, practice, and punk show spaces.

Dave, lead singer of MDC, described the tanks as being 40′x 10′x 10′, able to house half a dozen to twelve people each, with ten or twelve vats on each of the four floors. At any given time 30 or 35 vats would be in use. Soon people started living inside the building’s hollow walls on little ledges, sometimes fixing them up quite nicely. With the bands’ energetic activity the space became a crash pad and a scene landmark for visiting out-of-town punks and punk bands, the site of after-concert parties and band practice sessions.

The article seems to indicate that the Falstaff Brewery, a couple of blocks away from the Hamm’s building, was the actual site of this crash pad. Still pretty amazing.

More at foundsf.org. Be sure to check out that awesome video, too.

Marc found a little present today:

A top-drawer junkie whore left me an extra special gift pack in our sidewalk planter on little Adair Street:

Looks like someone was all dolled up and ready to party every which way with harm reduction.  They even rolled their own chemical free nicotine Buglers.  Clearly this was left from the pimp’s special reserve ho because the shit was so good she forgot she even had anything.

I hear Longshot Magazine hid 12 of these all over the Mission and will be releasing clues on the hour on where to find them! (No, not really)

Look for synchronized car wrecking in the London 2012 Olympics.

[Retina-searing Photo by Walter Dukes]