Mission Mission

The SF SPCA is holding its annual Be Mine adopt-a-thon, and kicking it off with a cocktail party on Friday, February 8. This is pretty much the best Valentine’s Day thing you can go to in the city.  Not only is there an open bar (last year, a friendly volunteer poured a VERY generous whiskey on the rocks in a plastic cup for me), but you can also get a $40 tattoo and adopt a new furry friend! All adoption fees will be waived all weekend (Feb 8-10) for animals from the SF SPCA, SF Animal Care & Control, Muttville Senior Dog Rescue, and Family Dog Rescue. Last year I got a little TOO much plastic cup whiskey and got verklempt over the existence of cats and how wonderful they are. Be careful. You might get weird.

You can also bid on the next tattoo to grace the skin of two SF SPCA employees. One of these employees is Daniel Quagliozzi, the Mission’s resident cat behavior specialist. Bidding is now open! What will Daniel end up with? A satanic Hello Kitty?  ”CAT LYFE” in Olde English across his neck? Find out on Friday! The party starts at 4:30pm and goes until 9pm.

The Be Mine adopt-a-thon has events throughout the weekend including free workshops and a freakin’ Smooch the Pooch kissing booth on Sunday. Visit the SF SCPA Be Mine event page for more details.

Everybody’s favorite queercore band, Limp Wrist, is playing two shows tonight in the Mission! The all ages show starts at 4PM at SUB-mission and the 21+ show starts at 9PM at El Rio (doors at 8!).  A not very reliable source also told me that Los Crudos might be making an appearance, but uhhh that’s not reliable information.

Update: Midnight Brain is not playing the El Rio show. Bummer. According to the Facebook invite, Permanent Ruin will be playing instead! (Thanks mentalbeat!)

One of the best shows I’ve ever seen was Limp Wrist at SUB-mission about four years ago. I climbed up on some crates behind the band and could see down the drummer’s underwear and gaze upon the bear pit. I hope tonight is just as amazing.  We are livid!

Flautas/sopes at SanJalisco. My food photography sucks.

I can’t even keep up with all the new restaurants on Valencia anymore. But who cares because South Van Ness is where it is at in terms of culinary delights (hi, Whiz Burger). SanJalisco (formerly known as Los Jarritos) is an old standard in the Mission at 20th and SVN and a longtime favorite of mine. It is never too crowded, the staff is friendly, and the menu has an illustration of a friendly goat waiter. Oh yeah, and you can get not one, but two dishes made vegan AAAAND you can get them in a combo plate! The potato flautas and cactus sopes combination plate is my jam and I’m pretty sure it will cure any hangover. Just be sure to tell them “no dairy” because both come with cheese and sour cream. They’re used to us crazy vegans at this point so they’re chill and understanding about special requests.

For some masochistic reason, I subjected myself to Yelp and saw that people were hating on SanJalisco due to the fact that they don’t serve margaritas. Shut up, Yelpers! If you’re really desperate for a margarita, just hit up Muzio’s market beforehand and buy a can of The Club Margarita and an airport bottle of tequila and drink it on the way there. OR stop being a dork and order a Negra Modelo or Bohemia–both are vegan!

They also specialize in birria dishes (hence the friendly goat waiter mascot–boohoo) and other non-veg dishes so it is a good spot to go with friends/family of all different eating persuasions.

Daniel Quagliozzi wants to help your cat.

Kittens have an enormous power over me. So much power that I willingly BART to Union Square every December, push my way through the packs of tourists and shoppers, and put my nose up to the window of Macy’s to gaze upon them against a seasonal, festive backdrop. I love those SPCA kittens. And I’m not the only one: The SPCA set up a pop-up adoption center at Macy’s for those who want to add a fluffy little addition (dogs included!) to their family. But once that kitten gets out of the fabricated winter wonderland and into your apartment, it might engage in some not so precious behavior. Biting, scratching, pissing on your brand new shoes (my cat did this once–I cried), attacking your significant other…Your kitten is more Stripe than Gizmo and now you’re regretting that adoption. Don’t freak out! Call Daniel Quagliozzi, your neighborhood cat behavior consultant.

Quagliozzi, who has worked at the SPCA as a cat behavior specialist for over a decade, started the Go, Cat, Go! consulting service to help cat guardians deal with these sometime difficult critters. You might be familiar with the Animal Planet show, My Cat From Hell, in which a tattooed “Cat Daddy” named Jackson Galaxy comes and helps distraught owners figure out why their cat is misbehaving and how to help them solve the issue. Go, Cat, Go works similarly except there are no TV cameras and Quagliozzi has “immaculate” hair.

By actually going into the cat’s environment, Quagliozzi can figure out why your cat is acting like a little hellion. For example, one time he was asked to help a cat that was peeing everywhere but its litterbox. When he made his initial visit, he noticed that the cat was immensely stressed out and knew that was the source of its problem. By working with the owners on how to interact with the cat and read its body language, he was able to help both the cat and its owners.

“Cats don’t live to please you, they live to exploit you,” said Quagliozzi. “They don’t come out of the womb knowing about petting.”

If you’re thinking about getting a cat for the holidays, Quagliozzi warns that although cats are easy to take care of, you must be involved with his or her enrichment. In other words, pay attention to your cat! If he or she doesn’t have the right toys, he’ll find other things to lash out on (like your arm). He also offers this gem of cat wisdom:

“Don’t take it personally if the cat does things that aren’t appropriate. He’s not peeing on your bed because he hates you–he’s doing it because his litterbox isn’t up to par.”

You know I meant seitan! This joke has been done a million times on a million vegan menus. Just kidding!! A million vegan menus is something that will only happen when hell freezes over. The Mission, however, is abundant with seitan-based dishes with diabolic names. So light a black candle and get your cloven hooves on these demonic, gluten-y treats:

• The Hell Fish Taco (Dante’s Weird Fish): Seitan, avocado, and pico de gallo in a taco formation.
• Devil Burger (St. Francis): Seitan piled on top of a vegan burger? Well, okay!
• Satan’s Philly Cheese-fake (Bender’s): The most evil thing about this sandwich is the number cocktails I seem to accompany it with.

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For the duration of the World Series, the SF SPCA is waiving adoption fees on animals with both black and orange markings. Calico kitties! The little fellow in the pic above! My cats are A’s fans, but they totally support this promotion. Visit www.sfspca.org/adoptions to find a new pal!

**UPDATE**

My pet rescue sources tell me that the Michigan Humane Society is holding a friendly wager going with the SF SPCA. Per their Facebook:

We have a friendly wager going with our friends at The San Francisco SPCA! If the Detroit Tigers win the World Series, San Francisco SPCA will sponsor 10 animals in our care with a $10 reduction in their adoption fee. If the San Francisco Giants win the World Series, MHS will sponsor 10 animals in their care with a $10 adoption fee reduction. BRING IT ON!!

In the end, it is the pets who will win!!! Awwww, yeah I’m a dork.

It has been quite some time since I’ve contributed to Mission Vegan. I apologize. There has been a bit of a dearth in new and exciting vegan eats in the Mission, I’m afraid, and I was feeling sort of down about it. There are so many new restaurants on Valencia, and not only are they out of my income bracket, but they don’t have a single damn vegan thing on the menu. I don’t think restaurants are obliged to provide vegan options, but it is a nice thing to do because sometimes even omnivores get tired of pork belly and weird artisan cheese. Plus, it sort of makes me think that these fancy pants chefs aren’t very creative if they must rely on animal products to develop a dish. Anyways, I digress. This post isn’t about how much the Mission and Valencia Street suck now. We have enough of that.

Us vegans have it pretty lucky in the Mission though, especially when it comes to pizza. Escape from New York and Beretta both offer vegan pizza and Paxti’s and Amici’s deliver to the Mission. Once upon a time, however, we weren’t so lucky. The dark days of a Mission without vegan pizza were tough. We’d request cheese-less pizza from Serrano’s and get strange looks. Or, we’d buy those crappy Amy’s vegan pizzas from Cala Foods and dump a bunch of Tapatio on them and pretend they were tasty. It was hard times, my friends.

There was one place that did offer a vegan pizza, however: Atlas Cafe. As a Northern Californian, I don’t claim to know anything about pizza, but I do know that what Atlas offers should NOT be called pizza. The No Cheese Pizza’s toppings are an unholy trinity of sweet potatoes, beets, and avocados–three things that are a) too heavy to go on a pizza and b) have no business being on a fucking pizza!!!! And oh wait, I almost forgot, it also has tofu on it? The first time I ordered it, I was like “oh hell no,” but once I started forking it into my mouth (you can’t pick it up and eat it like normal pizza), it started to grow on me. It is so wrong, that it is right. I ordered it again the other day for the first time in years and this mystic pizza thing still holds strong.

So thank you, Atlas Cafe, for being a vegan pizza mainstay in the Mission. Never take it off your menu.

Brunch can be difficult if you’re vegan, but us Mission vegans are pretty lucky when it comes to this oh-so-beloved meal that comes with a slice of cantaloupe at the end. Not only do we have the old standards like St. Francis and Boogaloos, but we’ve been getting some awesome pop-up brunches. This weekend, B12: Bomb Vegan Brunch is serving up waffles, scrambles, and more at Little Baobab (menu is on Facebook invite). Oh snap, and they have bottomless mimosas! I’ve been to two of their brunches and both times they’ve been spot-on. And how could you not love a vegan brunch named after the vitamin vegans are always accused of lacking?

Afterwards, if you’re still hungry, you can head over to Oakland for the Eat Real Festival. My other favorite vegan brunch pop-up, Hella Vegan Eats, will be there, as well as a few other veganish places. Vegansaurus posted this handy list of vegan options at the festival. If you can handle the foodie masses and the fact that they have something called “Meatopia,” it could be fun. Just stay away from those backyard farming people.

You guys, Hella Vegan Eats is doing a pop-up brunch RIGHT NOW at Dear Mom (until 5 PM). The menu looks amazing, but particularly the waffle fake fried chicken sandwich thing. Even better, you can eat brunch, have a few drinks, and then stay for dinner because Hella Vegan Eats is also doing tonight’s pop-up dinner! I’d totally do that, but I’m going to relive my emo youth tonight at the Fillmore (don’t judge me). I went to their last pop-up dinner at Dear Mom and it was fantastic. I highly recommend the Hunk Hunter sandwich.

If you can’t handle being back in a bar this morning, you can also get vegan brunch at Dante’s Weird Fish. Yes! Dante’s Weird Fish is open for brunch again and I’m extremely happy about this. I haven’t been for brunch yet, but the menu looks good, no? Their other restaurants, St. Francis and Boogaloos, are also reliable vegan brunch options. Okay, I need a (Worcestershire-free) bloody mary stat.

Photo credit: The Detox Market Facebook page

I’ve been meaning to go into the Detox Market since they opened between 21st and 20th on Valencia. Our friends at Vegansaurus said nice things about them and they have some lovely window displays advertising vegan products. But let me be honest here: the word “detox” grosses me out. It makes me think of those embarrassing friends of friends (we all have them) who go on a weekend drinking and taco binge and show up to Sunday brunch only to order a side of fruit and proclaim that they’re “detoxing.” Fuck that. I hate that! They’ll spend that whole day eating fruit and drinking some sort of filtered lemon water and cayenne concoction talking about how it does “wonders” to their “system.” It is gross, but I digress.

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