Mission Mission

Many things will end today. Many things will begin tomorrow, blah blah blah.

Anyway, today is the final day for the now famous Mission District photographer Dustin Diaz’s Project 365. Since the very beginning of 2009 he’s been taking at least one picture a day and posting them to his website. Along the way he’s become the Mashable Flickr Photographer of the year, and inspired thousands of kids to run outside at night and take pictures of out of focus lights. You can call it bokeh.

Here’s a self portrait of Mr. Diaz from day 100. He’s expected to post the final shot sometime before midnight tonight.

I would be missing the big picture here if I didn’t also include the “strobist info” that follows many of his shots, detailing his process.

I shoot the Mission at night all the time, but my stuff is nothing like his, so it’s nice to see him be willing and even excited to demystify the process for us.

Check his Flickr photostream for the final shot of the year.

Sounds like my mother moved to Cali.

Tamale Day went down when I was -OTS, sadly.  Looked like a KILLER TIME.

Tamale day is a strong believer in segregation and prejudice.  But rather than using this as hate, we use them as tools. You see white people have fucked up tamale day more than enough times. As a result we’ve had to enact some rules. Now I understand some people think this is “wrong” but to those people I say fuck you, white people ruin all our shit anyways and Tamale Day is about BROWN PRIDE! We don’t fuck with that vegan train of sucks, rolled tacos, white ass rice, or mango chutneys or whatever weak ass bullshit these cornball motherfuckers want to introduce.

The number one crime whites have commited at Tamale Day was touching the fucking steamer. One year a bunch of my hungry friends kept on checking the steamer. The problem with this is that the steam then escapes and condensates on the lid. The water drips on the tamales below which have dropped in temperature so that it takes longer to cook soggy tamales. After that year the coalition of the brown enacted a no white people allowed to touch the steamer initiative.

Yeah, China was pretty fun.  Definitely not the human-rights abusing pit of despair you hear about in the news (although the internet censorship is annoying but trivially easy to subvert).  I even heard PBR referred to as “The People’s Beer,” which is just skull-fuckingly brilliant.  Also, if you are ever rolling around Hong Kong, there is a delicious vegan dim sum place on Electric rd @ Lau Sin.  The sesame fried dumplings are off the hook.

And check out a solid HK-based street art group/the best cool-kid culture blog imaginable, Start From Zero.  They even host a yearly ping-pong tournament, which should give this blog some inspiration.

Behind the scenes.

Inspiration.

Click to enlarge

I wanted to hang out on the beach all day but ended up taking pictures of street art and other random shit while eating ice cream.

Condoms with wings: the rage.

URGENT! Mission SRO Collaborative is collecting toys for about 100 kids in need because Toys for Tots came up short this year.

These kids are seriously gonna have a shitty Christmas if you don’t help out. And I’m not talking about like when you were 8 and your mom fucked up and got you a Go-Bot instead of a Transformer. We’re talking no toys AT ALL for these little tykes. At this rate, these kids might prematurely stop believing in Santa (or black Santa) which will have some serious social ramifications (decreased cheer/goodwill towards man, disbelief in the easter bunny and muppets, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria).

Help stop the downfall of society now. Here are the details:

We need Toys (nothing fancy, just simple things like action figures, dolls, games, puzzles…you know the real stuff) by (This is the URGENT part) Monday 12/21 at 3pm.

How to get them to us: We are at 938 Valencia St. between 20^th and 21^st and we will take donations of Toys at any time between 9 and 6pm.

If you can’t stop by or need to make special arrangements, call me Jorge Portillo at 415-671-5089 or someone here at the Collaborative 415-282-6209 ext 16, 12, or 19 or email me at jorge@dscs.org or facebook or portillomail@gmail.com and I will personally see to it that they get here!

More at Dolores Street Community Services. Thanks Laurie @ Mission Locatl for the tip.

In case you missed the post from the other day, bags of brew are all the rage in China these days.  For seventy two US cents, you can knock back 5 beers in a Chris Daly disapproved receptacle.  Since I know you all were curious how the hell you drank from these, you’re supposed to impale your beer with a straw and share with friends.  Beyond the style points, the real benefit of this setup is that you have a place to put your vomit in afterwards.  Bag o’ Brew: where have you been all my life?

Anyways, since this isn’t a blog about China, you can follow all the oriental action on the other blog that I otherwise never have a reason to update and no one reads in general.

P.S. – When I get back to the Mission, I want to open a bar that only serves beer in plastic bags.  Good idea / bad idea?

Honestly, I didn’t even read this poster or click on a link to find out what it is all about because it is a cat drinking Hamm’s.