Mission Mission

(original photo via Telstar Logistics)

In the comment section of the Cinema Latino / Crown Theater article, reader “like a fox” brings us this interesting tidbit in my response to my plaintive wail, “Could you imagine something like Oakland’s The Fox in the Mission?”

Your wish is granted. The *other* theater across the street – New Mission – is slated to become a music venue – with the Fox being the model. Unfortunately, the New Mission doesn’t have the architectural splendor of the Fox. Don’t know how the funding or permitting is going, sorry.

Gus Murad’s club and height limits are well known, but the idea of a Fox-like entity in the Mission is a new one to me.  Any readers with more information?

(More Mission Street theater history porn here, and more pictures inside of New Mission here.)

Even over a century ago, bikes were hot stuff in SF. Streetsblog tells us all about it:

The bike clubs organized century rides around the Bay Area and annual “Bike Meets” where the fastest cyclists would compete against each other before large audiences. One of the biggest ever was during the 4th of July weekend in 1893 when an estimated 20,000 spectators would jam a special track built at Central Park just south of City Hall to watch the scorchers as they hurtled around the loop.

Daaang! I guess cycling isn’t a newfangled hipster fad after all. I mean, look at that dude up there… one of the original cool dads.

Read on for even older pics, talk of “boneshakers” and more.

[Thanks, Joshua!]

Ramona Emerson’s latest Things San Franciscans Like column is up, and it’s a keeper as usual. It’s called “Things San Franciscans Like: Not Being San Franciscans,” and it contains stuff like this:

Everyone you meet in San Francisco is champing at the bit to tell you how they’re not from here, and will try to insert their own place of origin as often as possible:

“Do you know where the bathroom is?”
“I’m from Eugene.” (Which you shouldn’t necessarily take as a ‘No’)

This is like a siren’s call to other people from Oregon, and someone nearby will be obligated to ask if this person perhaps knows their cousin’s cat Misty.

Read on.

Map scan by Carrie.

Hey, hey! Now’s your chance! Remember the way Phil Bronstein compared it to Milk? Epic. Can’t wait to watch it again.

Anyway, what I’m most thrilled about is now I can watch the opening two seconds over and over and over any time I want. (Before, I said three seconds, but I think they might’ve trimmed a beat for the home video release.)

This mesmerizing animated GIF has something to do with some Día de los Muertos festivities planned for next month. All of a sudden I’m excited for fall!

The question is, will Meli be all done up like this for tonight’s Butter Lap? Show up and find out, I suppose.

“Free paint!” Exclaimed our buddy Joe Finkel on Facebook a minute ago, “San Francisco is pretty cool.” That’s right. Recology SF explains:

Most of the latex paint we receive at the San Francisco Household Hazardous Waste Collection Facility [501 Tunnel Ave, San Francisco, CA 94134-2940, (415) 330-1400] is recycled on site and given away for free. If you would like some of our free paint, just stop by during regular business hours, 8:00 am – 4:00 pm, Thursday through Saturday.

Read on.

Thanks, Joe!

Photo by Stencil Nation.

Last month some friends took me out to this spot called Beelitz, an hour out into the countryside southwest of Berlin. It’s 60 or so beautiful old buildings, all abandoned and falling apart, and it used to be a mental hospital. My favorite of the three or four buildings we had time to explore was the one with an entire fucking old-growth forest on the roof.

I pride myself on always blogging things in a timely fashion, but I’ve been busy and I just now got around to “developing my last few rolls of film,” so I apologize for the untimeliness of this collection of extremely stunning photos (if I do say so myself), but here it is. Please trip out.

Previously:

Berlin Mystery Girl

Biking in Berlin

Reader Laurie V. wants to know:

“Cinema Latino” is what that old pillar-sign seems to say. There’s
some recent construction inside; they seem to have inserted a new
floor halfway up the structure; you can see it through those two big
holes they punched in the facade. There are some planning notices out
front but they don’t really tell me anything. Anybody know what’s
going on?

All I know is that place has really gone down hill ever since they eradicated that epic Ribity. Anybody else have the scoop?

Photo by bsii.

Building upon the deluge of nostalgic Dolores Park photos that surfaced earlier this week, MM reader friscolex clued us in to the gold mine that is the San Francisco Public Library History Center Blog.  And what a gold mine it is!  Here we have a photo of Mission High School students eating lunch in Dolores Park in 1958.  Myriad interesting things here. 

First of all, these “high school” students look a lot older than most high school students I see around these days.  In fact, they look older than most undergrads!  Perhaps they’re not really high school students at all but are merely playing the part a la James Van Der Beek.

Furthermore, I’m not quite sure, but all of these students look pretty white.  Although this may just mean that they weren’t on the city champion soccer team, I’ve got a feeling that most of their fellow classmates were white as well.  50 years later, it seems that things are a little different.

But that’s not all from the SFPL HC!  Check out these amazing early (1965) designs for BART trains!  Supposedly, BART promised “trains automatically timed to arrive at stations every 90 seconds during rush hours, [and] BART is guaranteeing everyone of its passengers a seat[!!!]“  I wonder how that worked out.

Nevertheless, the SFPL History Center is a gold mine.  Be sure to check it out and support it however you can!

Previously:

Dolores Park 20 Years Ago

More Photos of Dolores Park 20 Years Ago

Mission Soccer: A San Francisco Dynasty

SFist knows how to get in on the action.