Mission Mission

Nice view!

[Photo by @asvulgardoes, via It's Always Sunny in San Francisco]

Is Nick Pal in charge this year or what? Can’t wait!

[via Noise Pop on Facebook]

Local blog Big Old Goofy World tells the tale:

What a difference two or three decades makes. We called this “the Hell’s Angels house” or “the Cheech and Chong house.” On the top we see it c. 1980s, and on the bottom today. This house had so much drama that my brother and I, who didn’t have a TV, would often turn out the lights in our living room and watch the fighting and drunkenness. Guns, knives, family disputes, and high speed chases ended up here. These guys were straight from the cast of Sons of Anarchy. But they were also good neighbors, when they were sober. Dave, the main occupant in the 80s, was handy with motors and installed our garage door, still in use today. And we were told to knock on his door if we were in trouble. After the 89 quake, when portions of the city were burning, he rustled up a flat bed truck, big TV, and generator, and the whole block watched the news there on Moultrie Street.

Read on for more.

In the quite lively comments section of yesterday’s post about whether the Mission is still cool or not, former Mission resident and Mission-based business owner Jared Rusten posted the following thought:

you guys should come buy buildings with us in downtown Stockton (like Detroit, but smaller, safer, warmer… but with plenty of cool old historic spaces.) The mortgage on the 5000sf warehouse we just bought in Stockton (6 blocks from the waterfront) is under $1k/mo.

That is incredibly cheap. So I went back through Jared’s Instagram and grabbed a couple pics of the space. (The one up top is from several weeks back when they’d just started moving in; the next one is from more recently, after the skylights were put in.)

Maybe we should all move to Stockton?

Here’s where it is in relation to San Francisco btw:

[Map by Google Maps]

[via The Fog Bender]

Here’s the deal:

As heard on NPR’s This American Life and WTF with Marc Maron, one of San Francisco’s favorite sons returns to record his debut stand up comedy album at the Punch Line.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, CA, Chris Garcia started his comedy career in the San Francisco Bay Area where he was named “A Comic To Watch” by the San Jose Mercury News, “One of the 7 Funniest People in San Francisco” by 7×7 Magazine, and “a Rising Comedic Star” by the SF Weekly. Chris moved back to Los Angeles in the summer of 2012. Since then, he has become a favorite on both the national alternative and comedy club circuits, making memorable appearances on WTF with Marc Maron, NPR’s This American Life and NBC’s Last Call with Carson Daly.

Known for his vivid storytelling style, Garcia draws you into his world through a variety of characters and recollections that are both outrageously absurd and sincerely heartfelt.

This special engagement promises to be an evening not to be missed as Chris records a live album! Don’t miss this opportunity to see a rising comedy star let his guard down in front of a hometown crowd.

“Fearless, funny, and straight from the heart.” – Robin Williams

“Chris Garcia proves you can find humor in anything.” – Marc Maron, WTF podcast

“Chris is the future of comedy.” – Carlos Alazraqui, Reno 911

“Chris is someone who is totally hitting his stride as one of the next big comics.” – David Owen, Co-Founder SF Sketchfest

Buy tickets for Tuesday November 17th
http://www.punchlinecomedyclub.com/events/eventdetail/?viewNav=%2Feventdetail&eventId=1C004F31B7853F7A&oid=18267

Buy tickets for Wednesday Novemeber 18th
http://www.punchlinecomedyclub.com/events/eventdetail/?viewNav=%2Feventdetail&eventId=1C004F31B7893F7C&oid=18268

RSVP and invite your friends!

This really long sentence by local blogger anadromy paints a bit of a picture:

The guys running it seem cool and I’m glad they’re able to charge $11-13 (wut?) for slender burritos that don’t ever fill me up (plus extra for chips!) and still be so busy that it takes damn near half an hour to prepare an order (so that if you’re on Divis and you’re really hungry and you think to yourself, “Well, I’m near that place Little Chihuahua that I’ve always found expensive and overrated but I might as well give it another try” and you wait in line for what always feels like five minutes too long and then you remember almost the instant you order and the smiling guy behind the counter says “should be about ten minutes” that he is in fact a goddamn liar and that the place is so full of people who obviously just stepped off a Google shuttle that you’re not going to get your food for long enough that you might as well have walked the extra half mile to genuinely delicious and also much less costly Mexican food on Church Street) but come on, folks.

Oh and:

We don’t really think it’s good do we?

[link] [Photo by Tamara R.]

UPDATE: According to some responses on our Facebook page, it’s good for vegetarians…

[via Finch Linden]

In the New York Times last month, author Ada Calhoun wrote a great piece about how we feel about our neighborhoods as they change:

I think there’s more to these “the city is dead now” complaints than money. People have pronounced St. Marks Place dead many times over the past centuries — when it became poor, and then again when it became rich, and then again when it returned to being poor, and so on. My theory is that the neighborhood hasn’t stopped being cool because it’s too expensive now; it stops being cool for each generation the second we stop feeling cool there. Any claim to objectivity is clouded by one’s former glory.

I know this well. As a teenage girl in the 1990s East Village, every door was open to me and my friends. There was no party we could not crash, no person we could not make out with and no intoxicant we would not be offered. The city was ours. In the pre-Giuliani era, a fellow East Village woman reminds me, “You could still piss on the street.”

And check out this line:

I remember what it felt like getting ready to make something exciting happen, to feel a sense of the city and time radiating out in all directions, like the spokes of a wheel, with me and that night at the center.

I remember when the Mission felt like that. (Hence those photos up top from back before decent phone cameras.) (I’m turning 35 in a couple months, maybe somebody younger should take over this blog?) (Anybody know anybody good?)

Seriously, read the whole thing for a lot of great points that might change your mind or make you feel better, including a great note about Keith Haring.

[via kottke.org]

Looks like a nice neighborhood, and like a part of SF you probably haven’t explored enough, right?

(Check out brand-new San Bruno Avenue Corridor Manager Luke Spray‘s Instagram account for this photo and more right here.)