Mission Mission

Before I go into the top Mission Mission post of 2010, I’d like to tell a story.

I didn’t have a dog or cat growing up. Instead, my parents got us a pair of hamsters. While these little critters aren’t blessed with the talents of learning tricks, episodic memory, or establishing meaningful relationships with their masters, you can put them in a ball and watch them roll around for a couple of hours of entertainment.

We never named them. One was a shy, chill hamster, and the other one was basically a big asshole. At first the bully beat up on chill guy. Then the chill hamster got pretty big and kept the other one in check. This was a good time that I refer to as the “time of serenity”.

The bully hamster didn’t take to this arrangement and eventually started putting in extra hours on the wheel working out. He got stronger, faster, and meaner. When the time was right, he came back in full force. Thus, “the reign of horror” began. The brutal beatings occurred on an nightly basis, culminating in the bully hamster gnawing off the genitals of the other.

My point is, there are some things that can’t be unseen. A hamster’s disfigured, bloody stump of a crotch is one of them. This year in the Mission, a lady shitting on her house is another.

1. Mission Resident Shits on Her Own Apartment Building

Short story: An anonymous reader caught his upstairs neighbor shitting in the alley of her apartment building.

Long story: When this one showed up in our inbox, we had a lot of questions: Who shits on her own house? Who takes pictures of someone shitting her own house? Did she, you know, wipe? These are important philosophical questions.

Perhaps more baffling than the actual act was the reaction by some of our commenters to the effect of, “Hey! Stop picking on this lady for having a bad day.”

Bad day? I mean, I’ve had to go pretty bad on the road a few times but I’ve always managed to deal with it in a socially acceptable manner. One would think that when you’ve made it to your house, you’ve done the hard part; getting to your bathroom is cake. But I’ll spare you any more, the entire scenario was dissected thoroughly with the 80+ comments here.

Little did we know that this story would captivate San Francisco, even earning us an award for “SF’s Best Photo/Twitpic” in the SF Weekly’s 2010 Web Awards (you can see our fitting reaction at sexpigeon). To use a tired cliche, “only in San Francisco” could a photo of an obeise lady dropping a deuce be considered “the best” of anything.

In the end, I’m not sure what we should take away from this. However, I will say this: we probably need more public bathrooms in the Mission, and less people with high-resolution digital cameras.

Happy new year!

Whoa, the Hyde Street Pier looks pretty fun. Free entry, old boats, epic city views, respite from the shitshow that is the rest of the waterfront (because tourists don’t seem to care about historical maritime stuff so much I guess?). Let’s go!

[Photo by We Built This City]

This week, Mission Mission brings you a recap of the top 5 posts of 2010. Can you guess the number one post of the year?

Hey, I already told you it’s not BART Boner. Is it Details on the American Apparel Hearing (NSFW)? Almost. That was the number one post in terms of traffic. But dude, that is so 2009. American Apparel was already chased out of the Mission by an angry mob who was probably wearing their stuff the whole time. Not that you care, the real reason you looked at that post was the hot pixxx of Sasha Grey when it popped up in Google. That’s ok, we wont tell.

3. San Francisco Has Banksy Fever!

Right before Banksy’s first film “Exit Through the Gift Shop”  premiered across the US, all sorts of Banksyesque street art started popping up in all the major cities including NYC, Detroit, and San Francisco. The Mission was hit a couple of times during this promotional surge at Mission and Sycamore (see above) and Valencia between 19th and 20th above Amnesia.

Initially, there was doubt about whether or not the pieces were authentic. Commenters battled it out while other pieces popped up in Chinatown, North Beach, SoMa, and even Alcatraz. Everyone suddenly thought graffiti was just swell. Camera clutching tourists loitered in the middle of Valencia street. Reports came in that he had a private shopping session Self Edge and had stayed in the Mission for 4 days. So apparently Banksy likes Mexican food, gentrification, and really expensive uncomfortable jeans that you’re not supposed to wash for a year.

Inevitably, the works were augmented, defaced, and mocked by other local street artists. Local business owners saw the tourist potential of keeping the pieces pristine and inadvertently got themselves in the art restoration field. This brought up the tired debate as to what constitutes legitimate street art and petty vandalism. Meanwhile, Banksy watched it all go down from his luxury secret lair and LOL’ed.

Banksy’s film is now on Netflix, by the way, and he insists it’s not a prank.

2. Lady Gaga Causing a Scene at Rosamunde

We’ve had our share of celebrity sightings in the Mission this year. To name a few: Glee lady, Molly Ringwald, Margaret Cho, Dave Chappelle, and Steve Jobs.

The one that topped our charts was Lady Gaga’s unexpected appearance at the new Rosamunde location in the Mission. It started as a rumor, but was pretty much confirmed when pictures and first hand accounts came in. She was allegedly in search of an authentic Mission burrito, but got sidetracked when she saw a sign advertising “sausage”. This amused her enough to stop in, confirming that the pop star is, in fact, a 12 year old boy.

L. Gaga ordered white wine and did not actually stuff a sausage in her mouth. She bullshitted with the staff and admired homemade jewelry for over two hours while being reminded by her bodyguards about her dinner reservation at somewhere fancy. The Rosamunde staff urged her to check out El Farolito for that burrito she craved. With that she left. Perhaps to go to El Farolito where, if it’s anything like Flour and Water, she was told wait in line like everyone else.

Previously:

Top 5 of ’10: #5: Livin’ La Bebida Loca; #4 KKKontroversy

This week, Mission Mission brings you a recap of the top 5 posts of 2010. Can you guess the number one post of the year?

If you guessed BART Boner, then you’re wrong! That was posted in 2008 so it doesn’t count. Although, admittedly it’s still up there. Probably because we make way too many off-hand jokes re-linking it. We really should stop doing that. After this post, I mean.

5. FDA to ban Four Loko Nationwide

It used to be at every corner store, now you can only find it in the stockpile under Andrew Sarkarati’s coffee table. Four Loko became national sensation among party people in 2010. Why? It was cheap, first of all. In this economy we all need to cut corners wherever we can. It was also ironic, which is apparently an excellent reason to do anything this year. Perhaps most importantly, it’s loaded with alcohol. This malt beverage contains about twice the alcohol as your typical brew-dog and had a flavor that can only be described as carbonated liquified jello shots.

So why is the government and media being such a drag, man? The stuff is a allegedly marketed to kids. Check out all those fruity flavors and colorful packaging! They might as well serve that swill out of foil-lined bags like Capri Sun. Our own Ariel Dovas even saw the a youngster going loco over Loko on MUNI. The idea of kid-friendly alcoholic beverages isn’t exactly anything new. When I was a young pup trying to fit in, I thought beer was totally gross. The solution? Zima. Dizgusting.

So farewell to Four Loko, we hardly knew you. Say hi to Sparks for us in drinky heaven.

4. Spurned Scenester Sullies Sightly Street Art

Local tagger KKKatie is no stranger to controversy, what with the whole scribbling quasi-racist stuff on public and private property. She also apparently doesn’t care much for our 25th president William McKinley. That is, like, so anti-American.

This year she drew the most ire in the Mission when she enhanced a Chris Lux mural with her own artistic vision inspired by what you might see scrawled on the door of a high school bathroom stall. Apparently there was some kind of beef between the two. The mural was restored in one day, but still, this marked the beginning of the end for KKKatie. She was condemned by the street art community and her friends. Finally, at Bay to Breakers, she was caught allegedly spray painting on a dude and threatening to accuse him of rape if he did anything about it. In the end, she was acquitted of any actual hate crime charges, but got slapped with 11 counts of vandalism.

Of course, as with anyone you put in the spotlight for a bit, KKKatie has her fans, crediting her as some kind of disutopian, punk-rock folk hero. But most of us think she’s more likely a chemically imbalanced young lady off her meds. I suppose only she (and perhaps her lawyer) knows for sure.

Looks like one of our beloved F Market cars broke free from it’s tracks, evolved a set of wheels, and headed for the big apple.

Here’s its baby picture.

[via minimalist steampunk star wars ukulele photo repository Boing Boing]

Janebook examines a hypothesis put forth by one of her readers:

Do people really see hipsters as a legitimate subculture that individuals got together and consciously formed? Like, around 2002 all these dudes who got picked on by jocks in high school all got together around this big round table and were like, “Modern culture is fucked! Let’s make our own, where we wear trucker hats and Buddy Holly glasses and sweaters that are too small, drink shitty domestic beer and nerd out over records! That’ll show ‘em!” And then they recruited people and did their thing, then they all reconvened in 2004 like, “OK guys, new rules” [...]

Read on for 2004′s new rules and more.

[Photo by Primo]

I love maps! (This one is on the wall at Viracocha.)

Previously:

Russian-Tinged Klezmer Brunch

Rocktopus

Impish Toilet Octopus

In addition to being a publisher of personal appeals, Wikipedia is also a vast repository of knowledge. Here’s a sampling:

The Egg War is the name given to an 1863 conflict between rival egging companies on the Farallon Islands, 25 miles off San Francisco. It was the culmination of several years of tension between the (Pacific) Egg Company, which claimed the right to collect the eggs on the islands, and several rival firms. The resulting violence claimed two lives, but left the Egg Company in sole control of the islands’ eggs. Its victory was short lived; the company sold the rights to use the islands in the late 1870s and the federal government removed all egging companies from the islands in 1881.

Read on.

[Thanks, Penelope!]

Wikipedia knows:

The name California is most commonly believed to have derived from a fictional paradise peopled by Black Amazons and ruled by a Queen Califia. The myth of Califia is recorded in a 1510 work The Exploits of Esplandian, written as a sequel to Amadís de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo.[8][9][10] The kingdom of Queen Califia or Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a remote land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts and rich in gold.

Know ye that at the right hand of the Indies there is an island named California, very close to that part of the terrestrial Paradise, which was inhabited by black women, without a single man among them, and that they lived in the manner of Amazons. They were robust of body, with strong and passionate hearts and great virtues. The island itself is one of the wildest in the world on account of the bold and craggy rocks. Their weapons were all made of gold. The island everywhere abounds with gold and precious stones, and upon it no other metal was found.[11][verification needed]

Whoa! Griffins! Read on.

Previously:

Let’s All Sink With California When It Falls Into the Sea

Internet celebrity Eric Fischer just unearthed a few more ancient pictures of the Mission, including this shot of the Hairball in its infancy.

Also, Mission south of 22nd.

And, FYI, Mission Local has a slide show examining proposed Cesar Chavez corridor improvements that includes some aerial shots that illustrate exactly why it’s called the Hairball here.