Mission Mission

The world-renowned Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey is performing at Coda Lounge (you know, that place Stevie Wonder sometimes hangs out) on Mission and Duboce this Friday 2/12. They are a super-fresh modern jazz group out of Oklahoma that now features an instrument you don’t usually see in this genre: lap steel guitar. Check out the video below for a sample.

These guys don’t just pound out standards, they write a lot of original music and their sound is really unique, blending rock, middle-eastern, hip-hop, country, and experimental influences. It’s modern, yet still rockin’ and accessible. No diss to lots of other modern/experimental jazz stuff, but I don’t always like to hear squeaking saxophones and see dudes hunched over effects pedals.

That and any band who uses a Spinal Tap reference in their name is fine by me.

They start at 10pm and the show is $15.

Quesadilla = Tortilla + Cheese, right?

“Nuh-uh!” says El Salvador:

Sarkarati busted this Quesadilla Salvadorena out at Taco Summit ’10 last weekend. It’s a sweet, pound cake-ish food item, that somehow manages to taste cheesy using grated queso fresco. Try one for yourself for about $3 at La Palma on 24th and Bryant.

Between their service cutbacks, perpetual lateness, shameless venting on twitter, colliding with pedestrians, and providing free showers to residents on Fillmore St., it’s clear that MUNI is in the middle of an epic downward spiral of fail. Why? State budget cuts, they say.

But waitaminute… I can think of this other city that also happens to be in this state: Oakland. You know, that place you never go to in the “Eastern Bay”?

Ooh, shiny! This picture is from my phone, not an AC Transit informative brochure.

I work in Downtown Oakland every day and I sometimes use AC Transit. During a recent ride, it occurred to me that there are some really amazing things about it:

1. I’ve never had to wait longer than 10 minutes for a bus. The “walk or ride” calculation never becomes a factor.
2. Buses are modern and clean. Seriously, look at the picture. It looks like interior of an airport shuttle.
3. The realtime Nextbus predictions are actually accurate and seem to be able to distinguish between buses going in the opposite direction.
4. No one sneaks in the back door of the bus or flashes a dubious expired transfer. Everyone walks in through the front and pays their fare.
5. There’s this awesome concept of “Rapid” lines. Example: the 72 stops wherever you want, but the 72R will only stop at major intersections, often shaving off 10-20 minutes of travel time. Does the 49 really need to stop every block on Mission St? A 49R that stops at Van Ness, 16th, 24th, then Valencia would change my life.
6. As far as I know, no one has ever had to defend her seat with karate on AC Transit (less tempers, less crazies).

So why doesn’t AC Transit suck? I’m sure there are a lot more factors here, but their annual operating budget is $320 million, while the SFMTA is a whopping $808 million.

Damn, maybe I just need to get my bike fixed already and stop thinking about MUNI.

I was worried that my unflattering review of Nap’s 3 might lead to a flamewar. It’s a legitimate concern. Allan helped put me at ease:

You heard it here first. If these hypothetical Nap’s 3 facebook fans exist, then we’ll make a Herzog-style documentary of Allan eating his facebook, which should be good since it’s technically impossible.

Update: After School Naps <3 doesn’t count!

(pic courtesy of breadxbread)

Josh from TCB Courier says:

We have started working with Rhea’s Deli to offer free delivery within the mission for Rhea’s Sandwiches and dry goods. We are now delivering from 2 – 9 pm daily, and any order around $10 or more gets free delivery via TCB.

Rhea’s Deli has been winning over lots of folks lately. It’s easy to walk past this unassuming corner store and not realize that the sandwiches of the gods are waiting for you within.

At the recommendation of this very blog, I went there a month ago and had the Korean steak sandwich. It was the best sandwich that I’ve had in a very, very long time. Though, I gotta admit if that’s their idea of “mild” I’m not even gonna touch their “spicy”. They are also an honest-to-blog corner store, so throw in some Advil while you’re at it.

In case you didn’t know, TCB Courier is a bike courier service that will pick up and deliver pretty much anything for you. They are on bikes so they will get you your shit faster than anyone else. And yes, it is customary to tip your bike courier. Put them on speed dial now: 415-797-2255.

Chasing the Moon is a great video podcast that highlights local bay area bands. The performances are filmed in HD and recorded in a professional studio one block away from the best Vietnamese sandwiches in town. I’m serious about the quality of these productions; they make Nirvana: Unplugged In NY look like it was filmed in Super 8. Ok maybe not, but that shit looks good considering their budget of no budget.

In the pagan tradition, the podcast is posted every full moon, which works out to just about every 28 days.

This past Saturday, I was fortunate enough to sit in during their session with the Nice Guy Trio, a very unique jazz group on the Mission’s own Porto Franco Records.

The Nice Guy Trio in action. I had little reason not to believe that they are actually nice.

Producer Brian Berberich and recording engineer Scott McDowell do all of this work out of the goodness of their music-lovin’ hearts. They see is as an opportunity to keep their industry chops up and promote the awesome local music that’s going on.

The atmosphere at the session was really professional and they seemed to have things streamlined well. If they were stressed out, they hid it well. Once things got rolling the whole filming and performance took less than an hour.

Spectators sat in a corner of the studio on comfy cushions from the couch and were asked to stay quiet during recording. Restraining applause until "CUT!" was actually really difficult and awkward.

Chasing the Moon is expanding to do monthly premiere events with live performances at the newly opened Viracocha on 21st and Valencia. Their first was on Jan. 29 and you can expect to see more soon. The Nice Guy Trio premiere will be in 2 or 3 months.

Thanks to Brian, Scott, and the Chasing the Moon team for hosting and chatting with me! More pictures after the jump.

Update: Brian had this to add:

Elijiah Pahati is actually the biggest reason Chasing the Moon is so great.  He is the Director, Director of Photography, and Editor, and is why everything looks good.  He is also our partner, every bit the owner Scott and I are.

So yeah, props are due to the Directory Elijiah Pahati! Sorry for leaving him out.

(more…)

I have mixed feelings about Nap’s 3 karaoke night, which takes place on Fridays and Saturdays.

"When's it my turn? Wouldn't I love; love to explore that world up above? Out of the sea; Wish I could be; Part of that world"

On the one hand, the bar has a refreshing clientele of alcoholic old-timers who aren’t too proud to high-five the oddly-dressed young folks who happen into the place. Rarely was there more than a 3-song wait before your time to shine. Also, the exceedingly jolly KJ has a kick-ass raspy, soulful croon.

No, really. How deep is it?

On the other hand, their book is rife with glaring song duplicates and some surprising omissions. No Huey Lewis And The News or Boyz II Men? Every Tom Jones song except for “What’s New Pussycat” and “It’s Not Unusual”? I can think of 20 Nirvana songs I’d want to sing before their only suggestion: “All Apologies”. I didn’t check if they had Sinatra’s “My Way”, but maybe that’s best left unknown. Furthermore, the bar had a baffling “no beer, just $7 cocktails” last call policy.

So what’s the best place for karaoke in the Mission? Good karaoke spots are a delicate balance of a good song book, stiff drinks, not too many intimidatingly talented regulars (e.g. the Mel-o-dee, El Cerrito), and not too popular so you can actually get some songs in.

My vote might have to go to Amnesia’s Tuesday Rock-Out! Karaoke with Glenny Kravitz. I went a couple of months ago and have never seen so much spontaneous broomstick-air-guitar in my life. Although, who knows if the lines are still short.

Even if we assembled a think-tank supergroup of the most cynical Mission bloggers whose sole purpose would be to come up with the best Marina zingers that the world has ever seen, there’s no way we could have come up with anything more absurd than the real thing:

(via that up-and-coming blog BoingBoing, almost as big as Mission Mission)

Update: I feel like I owe this to the Pad. Here is their explanation (via James Fallows):

I’m only sorry the intention of this drive was unclear to you. Actually, our drive was a part of a bigger organized effort spear headed by the founder of JADE yoga mat, during the weekend of the annual San Francisco Yoga Journal Conference. JADE asked studio owners, teachers, students alike to give up their old or used mats so that the thousands of suffering people in Haiti may have somewhere softer the  ground to sleep.

So yeah, it’s a misunderstanding, but you gotta admit it’s a funny misunderstanding. Like that time my math professor wrote that equation “f=avt” on the board in a way that looked like “f=art”. The class had a giggle, he set the record straight, and got over it.

As you heard last week, Mission Street Food is working on moving out of their oh-so-classy classy Lung Shan digs and becoming a full-time non-profit restaurant. Their initial $500 investment option was a bit steep for most folks, so they moved over to the kickstarter.com model which allows you to donate arbitrary amounts of money anywhere from $1 and up.

If you donate $50 and up you get a gift certificate to the restaurant for that amount, so it practically pays for itself if you were planning on going there anyway. More details on their blog or just hop over to kickstarter page here. They have to reach their $10,000 goal before May 5th for the funding to happen.

If you aren’t aware of what Mission Street Food is all about, this documentary covers it pretty well.

Reader Jesse W. had his bike stolen. Anyone seen it? It’s a really unique Schwinn cruiser that seems pretty hard to miss:

Last night (Thursday, 2/4), my super-fly Schwinn cruiser was stolen, along with three other bikes, from my garage at 15th and Guerrero.  It’s super recognizable, especially if the dumb-ass punk(s) who stole it neglect to unstring the LED christmas lights from the frame.

If you have any leads post a comment or email us (missionmissionmission at gmail dot com) and we’ll make sure Jesse hears about it.

Before the inevitable, “WTF dude, are you gonna post every stolen bike on here? People get their bikes stolen every day! Try Craigslist and next time triple-lock your bike to the radiator in your bedroom.” No, we don’t post every stolen bike on here, but we do post the ones from readers in the Mission who ask us nicely and we have been able to help recover stolen things before. So if you can spare the 2 seconds out of your busy weekend schedule to glance at this bike, then cool. If not, then no big deal.