Mission Mission

Tell ‘em, NIMBY!

[via Male Awareness Day]

An email from reader Cat:

Someone (ostensibly a neighbor, since only they would have access) hopped my fence in the Mission/Potrero area, busted into our garage, and stole a bike from our Canadian friends who had ridden down here from Vancouver, as well as 2 guitars. I spoke to a cop who recommended the Laney Flea Market, by Laney College in the East Bay. Apparently, there are tons of stolen bikes there, and mostly if you show the guys a picture and tell them it’s your [stolen] bike, they’ll give it back to you to avoid trouble. The cop I spoke to was actually really committed to recovering stolen bikes, though he said that they only have about a 10% success rate. Still, better than nothing, right?

Also, the officer told me he recently recovered a Bianchi and a Fuji, so if anyone got one of those stolen recently, send me the details and I can let you know if it matches the description. Attached is a photo of the bike that was stolen. If anyone sees it, there is a reward, as it’s something a friend custom built.

So if you see Cat’s, get in touch, and if Cat’s talking about yours, get in touch!

This photo reminds me of a post posted and then quickly deleted by Sexpigeon a few weeks back. Luckily, somebody reblogged it before it came down:

The book pictured here is about the incomplete and possibly Quixotic attempt to standardize wayfinding signage in the New York subway. To the systematizer, the picture above is a woeful thing. To an inexperienced patron of the trains it is a stew of new-city delirium. Its opposite is the airport: consistent, coherent, bearing no particular mark of no particular maker. Airports are pretty cool, but airports most certainly are not rad, not anymore. Rad is a matrix of cuocoo passion projects and half-baked repairs to those projects. Rad ages weirdly: first poorly, then heroically.

Rad! Read on if you like. It’s long but worth it.

[via Lily]

[via Audrey again, who ''saw a girl texting and walking nearly get clotheslined by it'']

Handsome.

[via Audrey]

Apparently James Franco is a big fan of Kink.com — so big in fact, that he’s directing a documentary on the famed porn castle, and production has already started.

So what was it like when Franco came to the Mission? Indiewire has the details:

A tweet from Kink.com actress rain degrey from June 26 read: “Kink.com is all aflutter today because James Franco is here shooting his new movie. All these girls want to f*ck him! lol.”

Expect more James Franco in the Mission in the coming months, and maybe you’ll get to f*ck him if you’re lucky.

Previously:

• Kink.com to open Armory-adjacent bar for cocktail enthusiasts and cock and tail enthusiasts
• Peeping tom peeps on Kink.com
• Kink.com at Arinell (NSFW)

Almost seems like a directive.

Those of you who made it out to sample the delicacies of Hanoi at last night’s edition of Rice, Paper, Scissors were greeted with a pleasant surprise, as traveling omnivore and No Reservations host Anthony Bourdain made a special appearance to try the pop-up Vietnamese fare first-hand!  We were too busy scarfing down the delicious honey-glazed pork jerky, papaya salad, crab and shrimp noodle soup, and banh mi to get too close, but our pal Stuart managed to get some face time.  I wonder if he ever made it to Zeitgeist?

Concerned reader and resident Eric recently noticed that the Wells Fargo at 22^nd and Mission quietly changed the hours of their ATMs to a new ridiculously inconvenient 8pm closing time.  Since we happen to live in a predominantly cash-only neighborhood when it comes to bars and restaurants, this makes it quite difficult for any Wells Fargo customers enjoying an evening out to avoid the $5+ penalty for using non-Wells ATMs (not to mention folks who work late and need to deposit checks).  After his repeated requests for an explanation from their @Ask_WellsFargo twitter program (which is for feedback on their ATMs) failed to shed any light on the issue, he finally found time to visit the branch to see what the deal was:

Turns out, they are turning off the Wells Fargo mission ATMs (22nd and Mission St / 16th Street and Mission St) at 8pm every night because of vandalism.  Their words “that neighborhood is a high crime area.”  But they are not actually closing the gates to protect their machines; they just have the screens say “out of service” as to make it appear that nothing unusual is going on.  They are also not publicly saying what the ATM hours are nor, not even to the 1800 numbers you call to Wells Fargo services.  In the main system, these ATM’s are listed as 24hr ATMs.  Amazing.

Took a while to get these actual answers when calling 1-800-869-3557 since everyone that I talked to had no notification that in the Mission, all ATMs have been closing at 8pm for the past 50days.  I am assuming Wells Fargo does not want this info getting out for even the twitter responses are “please follow us so we can send you a private message explaining the situation” which I obviously am not going to follow a bank’s twitter feed.  And what I found out from the branch, they say they have no control of the ATM hours.

Does Wells Fargo hate the Mission?  We followed this up yesterday by visiting the branch ourselves and were told by the manager that the individual branches have no control over the new hours and that the new times came down directly from corporate.  Add up all these facts and something definitely smells fishy.  It’s not merely the inconvenience of being unable to get cash after 8pm; it’s the inconsistency of the explanations that truly inveigles us.  If you’re trying to prevent vandalism, why aren’t you closing the metal gate to actually protect the ATMs?  Have they just given up on our neighborhood?

Also, given Wells Fargo’s recent history of scamming customers with “unfair and deceptive” overdraft charges and allegations that it illegally took advantage of mortgage customers during the subprime bubble, the idea that this is another calculated attempt by the bank to exploit its users out of some extra cash doesn’t sound so far-fetched.

So Wells Fargo, what’s going on here?

Tamar Korn from NY is singing with Gaucho tonight at Amnesia, 8-10pm. She rules. It’s like someone with a time machine (perhaps this guy) plucked her right out of the 1930s. Here’s a clip:

Get there early to avoid the shit-show it usually becomes by around 9pm.