Mission Mission

So, just in case you were wondering: the gentleman decked out in festive attire made from chicken feet and tinfoil wandering last Sunday’s Noise Pop & Shop at Public Works wasn’t some derelict who wandered in from under the overpass completely crazy. That was none other than visionary artist Jason Jaworski, fresh from the scene of his latest performance. See? Art – the more you know!

Via Arrested Motion

(more…)

I used to only see these guys in the park, but just now I left the house for like 30 minutes and saw three just cruising around the neighborhood.

UPDATE: TK makes a good point in the comments. With potholes like these floating around, you best be on a dirt bike.

The day after having our minds and eardrums blown by No Age (and company), we got to see them talk with designer Brian Roettinger of Hand Held Heart at Noise Pop’s Culture Club at Public Works. They went into detail on their album art design process, including a history of record covers through the ages and lots of stories about their time growing up in the LA punk scene, and then they showed us this great slide of David Letterman holding their album:

We think Noise Pop should host Culture Club more often! What better way to recover from a show than seeing your favorite artists up close talking about their work? Allan’s first Culture Club suggestion was a panel of all those new bands with “surfer” in their name, or who use surfing and hanging at the beach in their music and imagery. Are they really all surfers? Do they listen to Dick Dale and the Del-Tones? We want to know!

So, Noise Pop, can you guys make this happen? Invite every cool band that plays in town to hang out the next day and talk about their process or their extracurricular activities or whatever? Hey readers, what do you guys want to see and hear?

In other news, my bike’s brake was stolen while parked on Mission outside of Public Works! It wouldn’t have saved my brake (who steals a used brake?), but Public Works would really benefit from more bike parking. So, Public Works, can you get some bike racks?

Oh and if you want to watch No Age’s rad performance on Letterman, check it out.

[Photo by Honey Jets]

[Photo and title by Alexandra Sheehan]

The esteemed Eric Fischer brings us scans of BART plans from 1962. This shot looks south down (and under) Mission from 23rd towards 24th:

The Look of Rapid Transit: 24th Street Mission station

The interesting part (outside of the fact that the BART station was to be so brilliantly lit that men wearing hats would cast stark shadows) is the street photo up top — it was taken from the NW corner of 23rd and Mission, looking south towards Bernal. (Click the image for a big-ass high resolution version.)

Particularly striking is the utter lack of trees (even on the slopes of Bernal).

Lots of donuts though:

Matching shot from today.  The trees make it hard to compare, but changes a plenty. (Click to enlargify.)

Zooming in towards 24th (above the epic car) we see the epic “Smile Awhile” bar:

A more clear view is available from the south.  It should quickly become clear what that sign represents today:

Much more on the history of 24th and Mission, both imagined and realized, over at Burrito Justice from a few months back.

This band No Age played at that sweet Grass Widow show the other night, and they were pretty amazing too. Drum-playing frontman Dean here charmed the crowd all night with a lot of cute banter. Before one song he exclaimed, “I love playing this song!” How cute!

At one point, he mentioned that the night before they’d opened for the Foo Fighters at Wembley Stadium in London. (Wow, right? From Wembley to the Rickshaw Stop in the space of 24 hours?) He said the crowd there sort of looked at them blankly the whole time, “like we were the weirdest band in the world.” The crowd at the Rickshaw Stop booed and hissed and shouted that this was lame, but Dean offered a word of caution, and a life lesson to an all-ages roomful of impressionable punk rock youth and snooty punk rock elders. “No, no, it’s not lame, it’s just how it is,” he said, “They just don’t know. They don’t know what you know.”

I thought that was nice. People need to be more accepting of different tastes. I’m tired of people getting all bent out of shape when I say I like Lady Gaga. But it’s great that he imparts that wisdom while also acknowledging that punks do in fact know a little something extra about the world, because we do, and that’s important.

A choice quote from some Mission Local coverage of a recent fatal shooting in the Mission:

“There’s a lot of gang banging, a lot of prostitution,” said one law enforcement official who asked not to be identified. “I’m not surprised that violence has popped up there. And then you have the hipsters coming around to the nightspots. There’s a lot of people looking for drugs, so that all works well together. It makes for a thriving community.”

Read on.

[via The Tens]

[Photo by The Secret Alley]

What a shot! (The first one. The second one is kind of a yawner.)

This is why you should be hanging out at Thieves Tavern during the day.

Recently Rob from Thieves Tavern, over on 14th near Valencia, suggested we stop by the bar some weekday afternoon and try out some good old fashioned daytime drinking. They’re opening at noon during the week these days, so if you fancy yourself a little too rough around the edges to do your work in a coffee shop you can take advantage of their wi-fi and impressive whiskey selection. Also, if you can afford to drink coffee from Mission Beach Cafe you can also afford to walk across the street and Irish up that double cap. (note that soy lattes do not actually taste good with whiskey) Or you can just start drinking early and find new and creative ways to overtip, like the happy gentleman above.

Bonus fun fact about the whole Thieves bar empire: apparently Dirty Thieves over on 24th and Treat changed its name to The Blind Cat due to the owner losing a bet. Of course people still call it Treat Street, and they haven’t changed the sign so it’s all very confusing. I still think of Thieves Tavern as the Hush Hush, so whatever.

Angela was playing Hangman with a 3rd grader the other day. Kids say the darnedest things, in games of Hangman, when talk of pizza is involved. I love pizza. [link]