Last week we told you all about this new collaboration by two beloved local companies. You go into the shop, pick custom colors for pretty much every panel and piece of trim on the bag, and then you pick your map. They don’t have every street in the neighborhood (sorry, San Carlos), but they have most of the best ones. You can map your favorite intersection, or series of intersections, or have some parallels, or some parallels and some intersections. And then, you align them on a grid (diagonal or horizontal), and you’ve got your very own personalized map emblazoned on the back of your deluxe, locally fabricated messenger bag! And all for less than $100! Only at Mission Bicycle!
Or TOTALLY FREE if you win the following contest:
In the comments section below, tell us what colors and streets you’d customize your bag with and how and why. Get creative! Get emotional! The raddest plan (as judged by Mission Mission and maybe Mission Bicycle) wins a free bag.
This contest ends at 8pm on Wednesday so we can notify a winner by Thursday morning so that maybe they can stop by the shop that day, officially put their order in, and maybe pick up one of those colorful Mission Bicycle t-shirts as a placeholder Christmas present for whomever they’re maybe eventually going to give their customized bag to.
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I would get Mission and Valencia intersecting with 26th, 23rd and Duboce to mark the three places I’ve lived since my apartment burned down on Dec. 20th last year (on the third anniversary of my moving to SF, weird). It just sounds really fitting because I had a really, really shitty year and I love the Mission.
Wow, I just realized today is Dec. 20th. That makes it especially fitting!
And… colors…. Black on the outside, and if the inside is customizable too, something like hex colors 0099cc.
Awww, I hope 2011 treats you more kindly
Karma ain’t a bitch
argh thank you
I’ve been thinking about what cross-streets I’d like to have on a bag. I love Valencia and Hill, but since I’ll be moving soon, I’d like something a little more classic. 24th street was the first area of SF that I fell in love with, back before my visit to the Bay Area became a permanent thing. Of the 5 apartments I’ve had in the Mission, 3 where on 24th street. Phil Jaber was my first landlord in the city, and I rented a place right above his coffee shop.
Even though I’ll soon be moving to 18th and Lex, I think I’d want a bag with 24th intersecting Mission and Valencia. Bonus points if it had Hill street starting at Valencia.
I would have to pick 6th an mission. I work near it and love it everytime I go past there. From the daily piss and shit on the streets and walls. To the piles of syringes lining the fences. Ohh and dont forge the guy who walks and screams preaching the bible. What could be better than 6th and mission. Great food, cheap drinks (PBR included), and a daily WTF was that experience. That would be my bag of choice. Orang/Black with a crack pipe enbroidery
I’d like a bag with 16th St. and Rondel Pl. because that’s where I used to live before some asshole decided to burn down the neighbors house and our place along with it. It is the raddest place to live, quietly nestled between Mission and Valencia, right on 16th. I could walk to my favorite bars and stumble home with ease. Pizza at Arinell’s on the way home of course. A few minutes from BART and it always smells delicious outside. I’m getting fatter just thinking about it. I get to move back sometime next summer when they finish construction, unless the neighboring landlord has another lapse in judgment when screening tenants. This sweet bag would help me haul some of my stuff over from my less rad place on 21st and S Vaness.
Oh yeah, colors!
Lime green on the inside and black on the outside, like one of those delicious Andes mints.
Capp St and 18th. Add 17th St to mark where I broke my nose and a tranny hooker helped me home and 22nd St where I helped a dessicated old drunk find his “wife’s” “engagement ring” (really! you could have knocked me over with a feather when he spotted a diamond ring in the intersection from half a block out). Bordeaux with Iris interior?
I unwittingly ruined someone’s life one night and I’d like to use this bag to set things right.
Remember Kozmo.com? Yeah so I was new to town and I ordered a single Odwalla Orange Juice to my office. I’m pretty sure I said “1121 Seventh STREET” when I ordered, but an hour went by and I got a strange call. This bike messenger sounded all out of breath and said “dude, I can’t find that address anywhere on 7th AVENUE – what’s the cross street?”
Uh… he finally arrived very sweaty and tired… all for a single drink.
Anyway, in honor of this man, my bag would be orange with bright green touches (in honor of Kozmo and the drink), and I would have 7th Street and 7th Avenue intersecting. I know it’s not possible in the real world, but at least on this bag, he’d have an easier way of getting to me with that single orange juice.
^+1
interstate 80 dead-ending at US 101…just because i’m a freak about privacy and don’t want anyone knowing anything more detailed than that…
all black on black so it’s illegible too…
25th and Bryant (colors: navy exterior, chartreuse details, turquoise interior), because this is where I reside, and where I fell in love with this city.
An Ode to San Francisco:
In June of 2009 I moved to the South Mission: a shabby but pleasant intersection of gourmet donuts and carne asada. A walk down the main drag (now festooned with colored lights) reveals the smell of roasting chickens, fruit and vegetable stands, and murals depicting colorful scenes past and present. It’s a safe place (so long as you’re not in a Mexican gang) that is mostly quiet, except for the occasional racket of Mariachi or Michael Jackson blaring from an open window, a passing car. Everything you need is within easy reach: the greasy spoon diner, the neighborhood bar called “Pop’s,” the corner store where you can get a tall-boy Tecate late at night for just over a buck. I like it.
The energy of San Francisco is laid-back and zany. People here seem to alternately enjoy dressing up in wild costumes or stripping down completely. People here like to talk, eat, and talk about eating. It isn’t uncommon for friends to debate the virtues of thin-crust, Delfina-style pizza vs. the sturdy heartiness of the Little Star variety. An above-average percentage of the city seems to know and use the word “charcuterie.”
People here are casually serious about their pursuits. Just recently I visited the Google office, and everything about the place was casually serious (think Kindergarten classroom meets cubicle: a union of fun and getting shit done).
Walking around downtown, I almost never see a proper suit. Or if I do, the suit is riding a fixed-gear bicycle.
San Francisco is good for me, I like to think. Living here enables me to meet people like me (passionate, with a short attention span) who enjoy the things I enjoy (eating, yoga, being mildly outdoorsy). I like the compactness of this city, the walkability of it. I feel like this is a city that breathes. Sometimes I suspect things are a little too easy, but I don’t dwell on the feeling. Being happy is hard work, so I’ll take all the help I can get.
I would get 18th and S Van Ness – it’s super-cheesy, but the bf and I had our first drunken makeout session at Bender’s and this would be the best anniversary gift ever. Black and red all the way, not sure in what order – but that seems the right thing to do for love.
valencia and mission with 16th thru 24th…..I’ve spent the majority of my adulthood on these character building streets. and i love every inch of the dirt, crime, and gentrification. Oh, and in 70′s orange and green and brown: no angst, just pure mission color.
Alabama & 24th St.
I have to be honest, I don’t live here…yet. My husband & I visited on our honeymoon & before we ever headed home we had already sold our souls to San Francisco. The smells in the mission slowly ripped my heart from it’s cozy southern nest. Hearing all the languages put me in this insane trance, that months later, I still can’t shake.
We stayed off Market, in soma, in some small, shitty hotel that gave me bed bugs. (I won’t mention the name because they have since redeemed themselves by giving us a refund & the promise of a much better stay, on them, next time…an offer a young twenty-something couple can’t refuse.) Having one, single contact in the city, a person I really look up to, I bombarded her with rambling Facebook messages in the weeks before our honeymoon such as, “where should we eat?!” “What should we do?!” “Should we stay ____ or _____?” My messages would pile up in her inbox, and I recieved 1 or 2, versus my 3 or 4. I clung to her replies, they were like the traveler’s tips from a San Franciscan goddess to me! This sentence in the first of her replies that stuck with me like glue :
“Try to stay in the mission district between 24th st and 15th s”
So I did. I tried my hardest to stay in the fucking mission district. I wore google out. The Mission lacks very little, but I quickly realized hotels that were honeymoon appropriate was one thing it didn’t offer. I stared at google maps literally for hours, I’d type in hotel, and shuffle through the results. I felt like a PI, following every little lead…but nothing deemed itself appropriate for lovemaking & sweet nothings.
I have this horrible ability to travel to a place before I’ve physically been there. I read TripAdvisor too much, I google famous places & stare at photos on Flickr…my inner foodie makes me comb through chowhound…etc But nothing, and I literally mean NOTHING came close to walking out of soma into the mission. We walked past hundreds of people, they all seemed so interesting & I found myself staring. As we neared the freeway, I became weary of what was to come, because here in Birmingham, Alabama, walking to a place isn’t a common thing, even though we are “hip youngsters” that live in some of the few lofts in the city, we still drive to the damn store that is a mere 4 blocks away…but my fear was stupid & quickly dissolved.
The freeway was like a gateway, on the other side of it, the buildings seem to slowly creep back in time, to this colorful era that almost seemed unreal. We didn’t talk much the closer we got into the Mission. We both seemed in shock, and simply observed this salmon-y, teal-y world around us.
The rest of the day is this beautiful, colorful blur. We ate empanadas & drank oringina. I bought thank you cards at a small card shop, I found myself making up reasons to give people cards. We inhaled burritos & washed them down with multiple beers in the middle of the afternoon. We spent hours in multiple furniture stores, running our fingers across mid-centry gold. We stared at people. People stared at us. We laughed. We ate the best damn ham I’ve ever had at Hog & Rocks. (I remember the name of the other places I went for burritos, cards, etc I just felt that naming Hog & Rocks was important because I don’t just eat plain ham on a regular basis…) We drank ourselves into these messy, over-tipping tourists, and as we walked to the 16th BART, we unknowingly stumbled upon 16th & Mission : http://16thmission.com/ …we stood for a long time & listened to people read stories, recite poetry, rap, and generally just express themselves…& although neither of us would really ever go to something like that here at home, we hung around for a long while…feeling embraced in a group where we knew no one. Maybe it was just the contact high, but in that moment, I felt strangely secure. Secure in a place I had just met that day. Secure in a city that that has 4 times the population of Birmingham’s metro area…
We spent 5 days in the city, and there is nothing that holds a more vivid place in my mind than the Mission. I think about it and it feels like yesterday. It’s easy for me to drift back to that day, recollect my day for a group of strangers on the internet, and ache to be back..(which will happen in less than 2 months, hallelujah!!!!)
As my husband & I looked for places to live, I quickly realized that the housing market in the Mission, is slightly more competitive than other areas. I’ve found us temporary housing in the Mission until we find our own little one room abode. I just cannot get it off my mind. People have asked me why not ______ or ______? And I simply cannot make them understand. I hope some of you do.
As I’ve said before I’m horrible at ruining experiences via my internet/google skills. A few months ago,discouraged about our move, convinced we probably didn’t belong is a city so big & a place so fast paced, I was looking at the street map for god knows why, and I started crying (don’t judge.) when I saw Alabama St.
I cried. It was like I was asking the universe to show me where I’d end up or why in the hell this place was so damn daunting, why did I want to be there so bad? It was like my world was itching with anticipation & I just couldn’t scratch it, and there in front of me was this sign saying “YOU’RE GOING TO BE OKAY, THE WORLD IS YOUR OYSTER!” Ta-da!
So, 24th comes into place because I take 24th street every damn day to work. It is also the day my mother had a tragic accident that took her far-too-young self from me. It’s also my favorite day of any month & always has been since I was a child. It’s also a multiple of 8, which is my favorite number on a scale of 1 to 10 basis. It’s just 24. And I don’t know why I like it/love it. But I do. And it’s simply a comforting, familiar number that always shows itself to me in places that are important or valued.
So all this goes to say. My bag would represent our new life in this spectacular city that seems to pull me from my small town roots. A small, small reminder of where I came from & who I am.
Thanks for reading.
ps; i’m sorry if im not hip to the san francisco lingo, or said anything that sounds like a lame ass…don’t eat me up, i honestly just am not as fortunate as you are yet!)
-m
ps:
oh, i forgot my colors
a black bag as a plain canvas (ready to be tossed about & hard to dirty up)
alabama in tan, as it is a neutral color, also my favorite one – standing for comfort & home
& 24th in teal, a vibrant, yet calming color that reminds me of being a kid & having no fear or shame or caring what a soul in the world thinks. its beautiful.
Hey!!!
I don’t necessarily want to put my life story here, but I was born and raised in the mission (6th floor General Hospital, holler~), so I would find nothing more pleasing to commemorate my 19 years of life here than a rad messenger bag with my intersection (22nd and Treat) and maybe also Shotwell (b/c of Cesar Chavez Elementary).
And at the risk of seeming totally uncreative, I would pick the exact same color scheme as presented in that first photo because I love earth tones very much (my wardrobe reflects that, too, actually).
(had incorrect e-mail)
Mission St between 23rd and 24th:
The first place I stepped in human excrement. It is also the home of BofA, Farolito, and BART; what is known as The Trifecta among my peers. The street and I have a bittersweet relationship to say the least.
Of course the bag would have to be brown.
I moved to the city about six months ago to ostentatiously pursue my masters at SF State, but really I just needed to get away from life in Southern California. My friend warned me that the Mission is full of hipsters and their cohorts, but I chose to live here in spite of all that. Now I know with certainty that the neighborhood has accepted me as its own, and I know this when random people would approach me and start conversations about the weather, shoot the shits, or ask for the time, in Spanish.
I’m Korean.
Since moving here I feel like I’m getting more and more asexual, but I blame it on the graduate school, and not my neighborhood (22nd and Mission). Actually, my streets are always oozing some kind of buzzing, relentless energy. Often this manifests itself with strangers having public sex in the empty lot behind my apartment building against the gray concrete. And once in awhile, like when the Giants won the World Series, the whole city becomes manic with the need for movement, with people engaging with mass hysterics, uniting in crowds and creating community. That night I drowned in a sea of orange, and the streets were fragrant with the smells of piss, pot, and pride. Surfing through crowds, hundreds of my closest neighbors had blocked the entrance to my apartment, but I felt no particular urgency to get home, since I was already there.
So, 22nd (gray) and Mission (orange).
To be more specific, 22nd (gray stripe) and Mission (orange stripe) intersecting on a black bag.
I’d make one with the intersection of Capp Street and Capp Street. Because it is the best street in the city. Yo! It is everything. In the middle of it all, and yet, still a haven of waving neighbors and chill.
Olive bag with red and black capp streets. And if i get to pick the inside, bright orange so I can find stuff in the dark, and be happy when I open it.
Love the bags. cool idea.
I would pick 22nd & Folsom. I have lived at this intersection for less than a year (but in the Mission for the past 8). A lot of weirdness happens at this intersection. My first month at my place I found a conch shell on top of the trash can on the corner. My corner store recently got robbed – someone smashed the window in the middle of the night and pulled out the entire cash register. Gangs of high school students in black hoodies sit on my stairs and give me and my partner attitude when we ask them to leave. Our crazy neighbors have 6 dogs who bark a lot and have started a mean parking war with us that involves a lot of note leaving. A neighborhood cat named “Kitty Witty” comes to our back door almost every day for cat nip (we’re kind of like his dealers). The couple down the street look like the Beetlejuice versions of Elvis and Priscilla (and according to our drunk hipster neighbor who always walks around with a tall boy in a paper bag, Beetlejuice Elvis was ACTUALLY a professional Elvis impersonator). There is a homeless woman who hits on my partner every time she sees him, tells him he’s “sexy” and tries to share her taco with him (take that as you will). As you can tell by now I’m sure, 22nd and Folsom is badass and brings me lots of joy.
As for the colors… robin’s egg blue bag with a red street and a white street.
27th and California where I was raised. 24th and Shotwell where my gf lived when we first hooked up and 17th and South Van Ness across from the Gas & Ho where I have lived for almost 8 years. The colors would be green and gold because I was born in Wisconsin and once a cheese head, always a cheese head.
I would chose 16th and Mission, the first “scary” expiience I had in San Francisco was at that bart station… basically I was a scared teen from Wisconsin.
I was born in San Francisco, but raised in Chicago…but until we moved to Chicago my dad was a pressman at the Chronicle, so I’d have to have 5th and Mission in there. I was raised on San Francisco fairy tales…my parents loved the city and my father particularly was devastated when they moved away. They lived here for 15 years, up until I was 5, when we moved away a month before the ’89 earthquake. I remember watching it on TV with my parents, both of them in shock watching cars dangle over the bridge and highway.
When I went to bed at night I would ask for San Francisco stories, so after graduating college with two handy liberal arts degrees it was the only place that I could imagine going. My partner and I moved out here and I fell head over heels for this place. I hadn’t been here since I was 5, but I felt ghosts walking around the city, seeing places that I’d seen before in faded photos from the 80s: City Hall, where my parents were hurriedly married, Dolores Park, where they posed with me up on the corner where the city is the most beautiful, on Market Street where I saw my pregnant mother riding the boat car, and the little apartment building that that they managed for years in the Tenderknob.
When I moved back my father started having dreams of driving up the Bay Bridge, and seeing the city unfold in front of you. I cried when I saw that for the first time. I’m crazy in love with this city, and Mission Street runs through it all.
Mission and 5th where my family began, and Mission and 14th where my first SF apartment was. Colors…Peacock with Red Streets.
I’d choose 16th Street and Mission Street, a black bag with horizontal yellow streets. 16th Street BART was the meeting place for my first date with a rad guy who’s now my husband. We had a awesome Mission date: burgers at Zeitgeist, ice cream at Bombay (R.I.P.), thrifting, and of course Dolores Park. Eventually we moved in together in a nearby apartment amidst the drug dealing, random things being sold on blankets, and crowd of people running to catch the 14.
Shotwell and 17th, because that is where I can leave my car for days at time and just get around by bike. I can’t believe I even shared that secret here, but heck, I figure most of you are on bikes anyway. I think I’d name my bag Sidewalk Juice (after the extremely un-appetizingly named Juice place) and it would be as colorful as the murals on the side streets that all the Japanese tourists come to see. A melange of all that is good, bad, and weird in this city. Good coffee, badly fitting plaid pants, and awesomely weird people, like the guy that has two alien antennae. Once I saw him wearing a custom made hat that actually fit over his antennae, keeping them warm. Oh, by the way, I need this bag to accompany the bike I recently ordered which will be christened Creamsicle, or possibly Tangerine Dream. Goes well with Sidewalk Juice, don’t you think?
Big love!!
-Darcy
I’d have to go with a design of the streets that border Dolores Park (Church, Dolores, 18th, 20th) and with the bag black and the streets in green. Not only is this the area that my apartment is in, but it’s home to one of the best parks in the City. The bag of course would be used mainly to bring my tallboys in/load the empties back out on glorious, sunny, weekend days.
what, do you suppose, does it mean when the shoes hanging from the power lines are… cowboy boots? is that a **15th Shotwell only** type of thing?
Deep aqua and lime and orange bands to represent the jangled feeling I felt first arriving at 16th and Mission after a year in Japan. Stepped off the BART station elevator and saw America the squalorous and drug addled, the double edged sword of free will and the culture clash that makes this city sui generis and bittersweet.
Streets would of course be 16th and Mission, offset by the slightly more upscale Valencia.
Winner winner tofurkey dinner?
I think i won so says the muni driver. Happy holidaze everybody!
Who won, yo?