Mission Mission

Earlier today, our own Ariel Dovas speculated as to the origins of Saturday night’s street fight. And commenters added bits and pieces to the tale. Now here we have a lengthy eyewitness account, from a reputable source who wishes to remain nameless:

Person X: i was at that bar fight
Sent at 10:30 AM on Tuesday
me: what happened!
Person X: it was all those skater kids from the mission
i can tell u the whooooooooooooooole story
and yes, someone actually came out of nowhere with a snowshovel and started attacking people
me: what started it? how many people were actually involved?
Sent at 10:34 AM on Tuesday
Person X: ok, so this one young party girl i always see around with the skater dudes
at then end of the night when they were kicking people out
starts yelling i nthe bar at some taller random creepy guy
trying to push him and was saying he was touching all of her friends and herself’s private parts
and she supposedly told the staff at the bar to kick him out earlier and they didnt
Sent at 10:37 AM on Tuesday
me: dang
Sent at 10:39 AM on Tuesday
Person X: so they all go outside and start fighting the dude
cuz the girl is all hooting and hollering that he touched her coochie
and u know those crazy 20 yr old skater kids who r just looking for any excuse to fight
well the girl starts fighting the guy
i look over and the dudes jump in the middle of it as the guy is holding a huge bottle to her neck
Sent at 10:52 AM on Tuesday
me: wow
i gotta run out, but feel free to keep telling the story
Sent at 10:55 AM on Tuesday
Person X: next thing u know everyone is punching everyone and some short hispanic looking kid with curly hair comes running from across the street to where everyone is in front of gestalt and starts hitting people
Sent at 11:00 AM on Tuesday
Person X: thank god it was a snow shovel because if it was a real shovel there could be a lot of dead people right now
anyways
Sent at 11:01 AM on Tuesday
Person X: i run down the block for safety and people are coming up to to other people over there swinging and suckerpunching people left and irght
i heard a window shatter cuz people were through big glass bottles (which they must have got out of the trash outside on the street) at the window of gestalt
the fight kinda disperses into segments
a group in front of gestalt
a group across the street
and then a group walking down the street toward mission
Sent at 11:04 AM on Tuesday
Person X: at that point the cops roll up and i see the dude with the shovel running down the block so i point them at him cuz he was sketchy as fuck
tha dude is trying to pumch people down the block still
we are leaving and all these ambulances come to that corner with the sketchy guy went
after we left people are saying they “hear” people saying someoneone “got stabbed in the head”
now that seems kinda crazy, but then again it is the mission so…………………..
and i dont know anything else than that
i tried looking up police reports online but couldnt find anything

[file photo by Ariel Dovas]

Anybody have any evidence of this guy in action?

[via francesca-pastine]

[via summerofshred]

[via Meesha]

It’s incredible to me in how many ways this guy has become part of our consciousness.

Calling all unemployed English majors! There are jobs waiting for you in the dynamic world of signage proof reading!

[file photo by me]

According to SFWeekly, late Saturday night/early Sunday morning police responded to multiple calls involving an 80-200 person bar fight near 16th and Albion. When the officers arrived on scene, within minutes, the fight was nowhere to be found. Not a trace.

[file photo by me]

Here are some possible explanations for such an occurrence:

• Ghosts – the people who were fighting were actually ghosts and they disappeared.

• Fighting Runners – people who fight as they run; everybody was running away from and/or into the fight at the same time and at the same speed such that the fight remained relatively static while moving through space.

• West Side Story Brawl – the patrons from Monk’s Kettle and the boozers from The Kilowatt exited their respective establishments at the same moment, leading to a Sharks v. Jets style face off. Just as they began snapping at each other menacingly, the coppers were called and a little kid in a newsboy’s cap ran out into the middle of the street yelling “Scatter, it’s Officer Krupke!” The two crowds quickly dispersed into cabs and alleyways.

So, one of those three things happened.

UPDATE: Somehow a plausible fourth option is being suggested in the comments: an actual fight that originated inside Gestalt, involving a man swinging a shovel at multiple people. Sounds pretty crazy. I’d get the hell out of there in a hurry too.

He sure looks pumped!

[via SFist]

“What thing?”, you ask. Well, isn’t it obvious?

Our pal C’mon Pony spotted this Sacramento Bee feature in a news rack over the weekend, so we decided to look it up online. It’s a pleasant read, and, surprisingly I guess, hipped me to something I had no idea existed:

Another unexpected pleasure (at least for the customers, if not the proprietors) is finding four specialty bookstores housed above a discount paint store on Mission Street. To enter, you must find a call-buzzer intercom, state your intentions (“Uh, to, like, browse for books”) and wait to get buzzed in. Then you climb two flights of stairs and get to Vahalla Books (first-edition fiction), then climb one more flight to the troika of Bolerium Books (radical politics), Meyer Boswell Books (collectible law tomes) and Libros Latinos (scholarly Latin American and Caribbean books).

Upon entering Bolerium (motto: “Fighting Commodity Fetishism With Commodity Fetishism Since 1981″), co-owner John Durham looks at you with a mock stink-eye.

“Oh, you found us,” he said, crestfallen. “We don’t get many walk-ins.”

Who knew? Read on.

[Photo by C'mon Pony]