Mission Mission

Vic Wong explains, in part of a game-changing revelation about plaid shorts.

Photo by Andrew Ng.

Chris Collin got in touch with us again to share another poignant story about living in the Mission.  It’s just as gripping (and heartbreaking) as his last tale of Randy the wanderer, but this time focuses on some complicated gentrification issues:

We were thoroughly friendly—even jokey and playful at first—but the guys just didn’t like us. Maybe we were interlopers on a block they’d dominated for years. Maybe our earnestness was annoying: our sputtering veggie oil car next to their monster V8s, our cheerful cat Biggie gazing innocently at their snarling dogs. Whatever it was, they unwelcomed us with glares and mutterings that only grew bolder over time. Sometimes we’d come home to a broken fence or a bottle smashed in our pathway, the stares from the stoop daring us to comment. Increasingly we didn’t. They had gangbanger friends, spoke intimately of violence. And, in my head, I turned muscle-bound and ridiculous, raining righteousness down upon every insult.

Have at it!

Previously:

Randy: Productive and Uptight Vs. Marginal and Odd

Crazy Mission Neighbor

Our very best friend in the world Caroline McCormick delivered some great news earlier today via Facebook update:

[J]ust heard a man on the F Market line refer to it as a “funny-ass bus.”

Perfecto. Now we know what the F stands for!

Photo by tweetsweet.

Previously:

Who Knew You Could Charter An F-Market for Less Than $500?

Let’s all just take a moment and listen to “Wrong Nigga to Fuck With” (embedded below for those whose iTunes lack it) while looking at this shot of Cube from the official poster for Lottery Ticket, out August 20.

How does this make us feel?

Actually this new thing on Valencia just makes me think of the big baby in Toy Story 3.

Photo by tweetsweet.

Well, it probably won’t be quite as good as this rad poster, but the Roxie, as you can see, is screening a double feature of Wet Hot American Summer and One Crazy Summer on Sunday night, July 4th, presumably to celebrate our nation’s independence.

AND you can win a pair of tickets right here, right now!

Everybody loves Wet Hot American Summer, so tell us why you love it even more than everyone else. And it can’t just be because you really really love Paul Rudd’s butt. Tell us a tale, weave us a yarn. In the comments section below.

Mission Mission and maybe Roxie staff will pick the best one and that person will get two tickets.Contest ends Friday at 5pm.

✌

By the way, last year I interviewed some members of the State, and one of the things David Wain talked about was the downside of having made something so genius:

The typical meeting with a studio or production company would be them saying, “Wet Hot American Summer is the greatest movie ever made. We love it. We watch it every day. Now can you do something that has absolutely nothing to do with that kind of sense of humor, and make sure that there’s not a shred of your voice in it, and then we can work together?”

Bummer, right? Read on.

How about that height!!

It’s almost as good as that tree-looking ‘do on the gal next to her.

Photo by thatsarahbeth.

Coming down from a burrito high is the worst. If you find yourself in NYC needing quick fix, there are apparently options.

When a bartender heard that we were from San Francisco, he raved about Dos Toros in Union Square.

Another staff member who claimed to be from Berkeley (and later proved this by knowing intricate details of student co-op living) confirmed that it’s pretty awesome, so I checked it out. This is a taqueria modeled directly after the bay’s own Gordo Taqueria by two fellows from Berkeley who wanted to bring bay area burritos to NYC.

Here’s what their carnitas burrito looks like:

First of all, the pierced and tatt’ed young lady who wrapped my burrito really didn’t know what she was doing. Her end folds were way too big pushing all the contents to the middle. She tried to cover things up with an exaggerated triangle fold to bring the edges in, but this just resulted in burrito contents shooting out of the tip at a higher velocity after the second roll. The whole structural integrity of the burrito was therefore compromised, as you can see from the cracking of the overloaded bottom half:

This was a far cry from the burrito wrapping mastery one would see at any taqueria here, but I was in a forgiving mood. Maybe she was new here.

Anyway, when I could keep the burrito from spilling everywhere I thought it tasted really good. The carnitas meat was moist and flavorful. If I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the humidity and tourist swarms outsides I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about this being a bay area burrito. It’s really hard to be objective on the matter, of course the Mission in me wanted to hate it, but honestly I didn’t.

One of the guys working there must have picked up on my SF-ness because he asked, “did we pass the test?” Yeah, I think so. In any case, you’re definitely better off there than the Chipotle Mexican Grills that seemed to be everywhere.

One takeaway from this experience is that NYC is clamoring for a good burrito. Just about every NYC resident I talked to had heard of or eaten at Dos Toros. Other SF businesses are opening franchises in the area, so it doesn’t seem out of the question for taquerias to follow. Here’s to El Farolito East in 2011.

Whoa, check out this photo of some buds in an alley Troy Holden took a while back. What a shot. Epic as can be.

Peep it large here.

He made the announcement this morning to members of the “I Wanna See Paul F. Tompkins in San Francisco!” Facebook group:

So that’s it: Paul F. Tompkins, September 17th at the Elbo Room, thanks to hundreds of folks joining a Facebook group.

You’ll recall (or perhaps you won’t) Iron Davy Cole’s official Mission Mission interview with Mr. Tompkins, in which this whole effort was first discussed.