Mission Mission

[Cheez-It lover by Dex; hairshirt by Lindsey]

Our buddy Allie was there:

Last night I drove three hours to Cleveland to see San Francisco’s Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin at a venue called Beachland Tavern. I get there at about 8:45, and Human Eye are set to play at 9, but they’re not there yet. Around 9:45 Ty and Mikal take the stage, informing everyone that “we’re Toad, and this is only our second show!”. They play a bunch of covers. It’s unexpected and awesome that they play this extra set to compensate for Human Eye’s tardiness, but something during the set is less than awesome: four or five dudes, dancing way too aggressively. Now, I understand that it is a rock’n’roll show. I’ve been to a few before. But this is not your ordinary show dancing — these dudes are tearing each other apart and ramming REALLY HARD into everybody on the outskirts of the large circle that had parted in reaction to their rambunctious existence. They’re falling and writhing onstage and stealing the microphone to shout, “HAIL SATAN!”. Soon enough, Ty and Mikal are looking a little puzzled, and people are starting to get really irritated, myself included. This venue isn’t huge and these dudes are taking up a pretty significant portion of space in front of the stage. After Ty and Mikal finish their set, a few security guards plow through to warn the dudes, hey, cut it out!. Human Eye still isn’t there, so Mikal plays a set of his solo album. It’s the first time I’ve seen him perform this set and it’s HEAVENLY. The dudes are back, though, and aggressive as ever. It’s becoming increasingly clear to Mikal and everyone in the crowd that these guys are far less concerned with having a good time and far more concerned with injuring bystanders and being disruptive for no apparent reason. They continue stealing the mic, screaming “HAIL SATAN, 666!”, writhing around onstage, and pushing each other and other people around extremely violently through the set. As Mikal’s set is coming to a close, he looks disenfranchised. Finally, he has had enough of the quarreling and jumps into the crowd to break up the fighting. Seeing Mikal taking action, the usually polite, mild-mannered Ty leaps from his place behind the stage and plunges into the fight.

Read on for the dramatic conclusion including Ty’s epic explanation.

Here’s what Ty’s live set is looking like these days btw, from last Thursday in NYC:

Above screenshot is from Ty’s brand-new music video.

So says our pal Deep, who you may remember came home Saturday night to discover that the plyceratops mural in front of his house had been graffiti bombed.  Well, that just gave him an excuse to hang out the next day (which happened to be a lovely sunny Sunday–nice work Indian summer!) with his buddy Adrian again to fix it.

Moreover, in doing so, they actually made it better, adding an additional dinosaur and some other small stuff to cover up parts of the offending tag.  I’m quite inspired by the deep philosophy here:  If someone tags your shit, tag it back!  You can complain all you want and you’ll probably even be right, but the best way to have an effect on the community is to get your hands dirty and do something about it yourself!

These two babes are walking around the park with a cauldron full of arepas and a tray full of fillings. Get here now!

I was super stuffed from brunch at Beretta and a cookie at Arizmendi, so I didn’t actually eat a whole one, but they gave me this little free sample and it was as golden and crunchy and warm and soft on the inside as could be. Best arepa I’ve had on the west coast.

Here’s their hot new single:

RSVP and invite your friends here.

Reader Hap L. witnessed a jacking like 10 or 15 minutes ago:

I just saw this guy smash the passenger window then drive off with this crappy light blue buick on 22nd street just east of Guerrero….

Should’ve locked through the rear triangle like we told you!

Some of you may remember from last week the sweet triceratops mural Deep’s (tricycle speaker guy) pal Adrian painted on the plywood barricade erected around his garage to protect expanded construction of the city’s first residential parklet (which so far has looked quite amazing).

Unfortunately, while the mural was originally designed with the idea to ward off taggers who seemed to enjoy hitting up the blank wall, it doesn’t seem to have worked for long, as Deep came home last night to see even this peaceful thunder lizard covered in some illegible scrawl.  Having exhausted preventative measures, he wants to know what you guys think of the situation:

Some tagging is really lame while other tagging is considered street-art. Where do you draw the line?

Previously:

Mission Market mural bombed

Fresh off his inspiring performance last night at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Thurston Moore opted for a more subtle undertaking at one of our neighborhood’s highly-touted coffee shops this morning.  Fortunately, my savvy cousin Nushin was on the scene and snapped this pic so the exploit would not be lost to posterity:

Suspicions confirmed by the highly agitated and blushing barista. We were too shy to invite him to the knockout tonight for the sonic youth cover band.

How rad would that have been?!?  Thurston, if you see this, come to the Knockout tonight!

(Thanks Lauren and Nushin!)