Mission Mission

We invite you to take a must deserved break to enjoy some recent photos of our favorite furry drinking companions at Pops Bar.  Come by and bring your pup or make a new friend.  Want more?  Visit @sfbarpups on Instagram.  You can also follow @popsbar on Instagram.

Check out this week’s full entertainment line up at Pops Bar:

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Ever since we saw the 2016 Tony Award performances of The Color Purple cast we’ve wanted to see this show. From the heart wrenching plot, to the big gospel voices, to Oprah’s love, we were excited to see if this revival lived up to all the accolades it had garnered. When we saw the Broadway tour was making its way to SHN’s Orpheum Theatre, we decided to head out for an evening of drama talk and drinks.

Photo by Matthew Murphy.
Adrianna Hicks (Celie) and the North American tour cast of THE COLOR PURPLE.

Brittany: They had such good voices. The first act was depressing. It’s awful how terrible people can be to each other. White people are terrible to people of color. Men are terrible to women. Women are terrible to other women. Basically everyone is just terrible to each other. Then the second act redeems it all. I love the message of – no matter how much shit you go through you can be resilient – that’s pretty amazing.

Katie: Masterful singing for sure. The music didn’t quite meet my expectations though. The majority of the songs sounded so similar to one-another. I can’t remember any of them for the life of me. I enjoyed some of the duets and harmonies, when the songs showed an emotional range, but even those aren’t that memorable.

B: Yeah, the songs weren’t that catchy. That’s part of why I liked the second act better, the songs were more varied. The first act was basically all gospel, which every-single-person in that cast could sing like a dream, but there wasn’t much variety.

K: The show was beautiful and moving, I was entertained, but I wouldn’t need to see it again. For me I saw The Color Purple and I’m good. Also, story-wise it was really fucking sad and then all the sudden it wasn’t. The complicated painful relationships were too easily cleaned up and reconciled, which felt really weird to me.

B: I didn’t understand Celie’s transformation, I don’t get what it was that made her flip from being passive, to suddenly willing to stand-up to her abusive husband. I just didn’t see that transformation happening until it already happened.

K: For me there was something really contrived about this musical. It felt like someone made a musical out of this well known book and movie just to make a musical.

B: This was totally made with the understanding it would probably make a ton of money, which you can kind of tell…I feel like the musicals that are really special, the ones that you can’t get out of your head, are the ones written by people who are hungry and brave and don’t necessarily know that their piece will be successful. With this musical they thought “It’s The Color Purple, people will come.” I still think people should see it though. Everyone in the cast was amazing.

K: Agreed, definitely a show worth seeing.

The Verdict: A sad but beautiful story told by actors with amazing talent, heart, and voices. Go see it!

The Drama Talk: While The Color Purple is neither of our favorite musicals, this is still a great production. The cast has unbelievable voices. Some of the performances are inspiring. In all, it was an engaging and impressive show, like so many of the Broadway tours. While the happy-ending feels a bit far fetched, it’s nice that the show doesn’t leave you in the pit of despair it puts you in during the first act. Although we didn’t leave the theatre humming any of the tunes, it was still a great and memorable night of drama talk and drinks.

The Drinks: After this rollercoaster of a musical we wanted to go to a bar that was chill and loungy. Luckily 2 blocks away in the Twitter building there is Dirty Water, which is often not very busy late night and weekends and is full of couches.

The Color Purple plays through May 27th at the Orpheum Theatre. Tickets range from $55-$246 and can be purchased on the SHN website. Right now there are discounted tickets available on Goldstar.

Love your Pops? Now you can show the world! Hop on Pops and get our brand new tee-shirts and sweatshirts.  Represent your favorite bar around San Francisco and go nowhere fast with us! Tees are $20 & Sweatshirts are $50, available at Pops Bar right now.

Check out this week’s entertainment line up at Pops Bar.

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And then we wait some more. We wait for ice cream, for bbq, for coffee, for any decent restaurant, for any decent experience at all really, it’s almost become a social experiment: the lines of San Francisco. One of the longest running San Francisco waiting experiences is maybe the harshest, the wait for BRUNCH! You’re starving and you’re so close to your favorite hang over meal you can taste it but you put your name in for an excruciating hour long wait. Well mission dwellers, if your wait happens to be at the classic St. Francis Fountain, the struggle is over. Enter The Brunch Mob at Pops Bar! Every Saturday from 10am to 3pm, leave your name at the Fountain and hop over to Pops Bar. There you’ll find our amazing Bartender Deb ready to serve you up a delicious Bacon Bloody Mary while DJs Milton Badley and Snelly Davis Jr. spin soothing classics to ease you into your morning. So grab a little hair of the dog or a nice morning buzz to amuse you on the way to your great San Francisco wait. At Pops Bar, we’re waiting for YOU!

Check out this week’s full entertainment line up at Pops Bar:

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Stop in Pops for the brand new “Purple Drink”, just $7 all day, everyday.  With Taaka Gin, Violette, and Ice it’s the a grape soda lovers dream come true.

Check out this week’s full entertainment line up at Pops Bar:

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Check out this total throwback recently unearthed by our ol’ pal Lizzy (former Mission Mission contributor) (who years ago relocated to another city altogether):

Wow don’t remember when or why I got these besides that it was probably right about this time 5 years ago. Actually, I was probably hanging onto them for @punkgirls one night or something. Viva Thursdays at Jacks. I’m even listening to Rilo Kiley 😶 [link]

RIP Jack’s!!! Also, what the F is happening with that space anyway??? (DJ Purple’s karaoke night ended, and then they closed up altogether, and then some refurbishment seemed to start, and then it stalled, and now it’s been sitting vacant for about a million years.)

Let’s rock:

And now please enjoy all these Jack’s-related posts from over the years…

Five nights in a row!! Whatdowedo??!??

Thursday: Halloween Costume Dance Karaoke (w/ DJ Purple) @ Slate!

Friday: Black Lips, Prince, Harold Ray Live, and Warren Zevon (kinda) @ some place in Oakland!

Saturday: Smithfits (w/ costume contest) @ The Knockout!

Sunday: Nobunny (special Halloween show) @ Hemlock!

Monday: American Tripps (w/ DJs Wam Bam Ashleyanne & Tristes Tropiques) @ Pop’s!

It started as an accident and then spiraled out of control:

1. Eloise – The Damned
2. Delilah – Tom Jones
3. Dawn – The Four Seasons
4. Julia – The Beatles
5. Veronica – Elvis Costello
6. Beth – KISS
7. Jolene – Dolly Parton
8. Valerie – Amy Winehouse

It was awesome.

Support your local karaoke night! (In the Mission we recommend DJ Purple on Thursdays at Slate and Roger Niner on third Fridays at Pop’s.)

In the foreground is the “Purple Rain,” which features a really nice helping of smashed blackberries. It’s the best use of fruit on a sandwich since the ham and banana sandwich at Cafe St. Jorge.

In the background is the “Island,” which has some shrimps and some slaw and this AMAZING kinda-hot-kinda-sweet sauce.

They were both on today’s specials board, so I’m not sure how long they’ll be around, but Clare’s Deli is doing lots of great stuff lately, so do check it out.

He was doing one of his short-notice late-night sets, this time at the Chapel. The Chronicle was on the scene:

Chappelle ended up dedicating much of the four-hour show to Prince, sharing stories of how his sister introduced him to the funky music, how he was finally introduced to Prince in real life and how much he respected Prince’s fight to protect the rights of musicians and artists.

Backed by a band, Chappelle’s set was as much as a musical tribute as it was a laugh fest. He often encouraged the band to keep jamming since he believed they could “say more with music than I could ever say … all I have are pussy jokes left anyway.”

Martin Luther McCoy, a San Francisco singer who wore a black shirt that read “Purple Reign,” provided vocals for the night. He and the band performed a medley of Prince hits including sing-alongs like “Kiss” and “Nothing Compares 2 U,” during which Chappelle often had his head bowed. At one point, just after 3 a.m., Chappelle unsheathed a shiny tambourine that bore the “Artist Formerly Known as Prince” symbol.

Read on.

[Photo by m__nolia]