Mission Mission

Finish off your Thursday with a chill jam courtesy of local fave Social Studies.  It’s the first single off their new upcoming album, which you helped make happen, and you can listen to it over at Nylon.  There’s also an interview with singer/keyboardist Natalia where she takes you behind the scenes into the song’s inception:

I wrote “Terracur” while I was working on music in the hills of Ukiah. I was living in a cabin on a break from the city, and trying to write music in a void. I got the idea for the song in a rocking chair on my back porch…

Read on and listen to the song here!

Sure, you could make countless trips to the dump scrounging reclaimed materials, or you could just buy the parklet in front of Fabric8 for a considerable markup, drop it in your yard, and call it a day.

This one-of-a-kind parklet was designed and built by San Francisco artist Erik Otto using recycled materials. It has been featured in numerous publications, documentaries, and television programs. Most materials were procured from SF Recology (aka the dump) via Otto’s previous artist-in-residence there.

Amenities include 4 custom-made bean bags; low-voltage lighting system inside the house; and delivery/installation within the area. Can be purchased in part or whole. Olive tree and steel foundation excluded. Seller financing available.

More information: http://fabric8.com/parklet/2011.html

Not really my style, but I call dibs on Deep’s parklet triceratops if that ever goes for sale.

[Craigslist via Curbed SF]

There is a hanged pigeon outside my window. I take no joy in this. Evidence seems inconclusive to me as far as cause of death. Accidental? Maybe it got caught in this plastic bag and then hooked on the fence. Murder? A trap? Dinner?

UPDATE: I climbed up and freed the bird, also getting what I believe to be an answer to the primary question. Any guesses?

Street food babe and SF subletter by choice Valerie Luu interviewed that girl we posted about last week who was having such a hard time finding a place to live that she resorted to facebook advertising. Was her search fruitful? Apparently not:

What did people say?

“You’re fucking dumb.” is one that struck out the most because I don’t think there’s anything dumb about utilizing a popular social network to help.

Anything helps, right? So why not use it?

I’ve gotten offers from people who wanted me to live with them and I even made a few friends! But mostly what they were offering wasn’t ideal to me (like sharing a house room with two other people, or relocating to Oakland.)

Damn, well if she can’t share a room with two other people, then forget about renting half a bed. So she’s moving back to Seattle for now, the mythical land of sub-$3000 900 sq. ft. studios.

Read on over at SubletSF.

Now that the weather is getting somewhat warmer, I thought that this might be a good time to direct your attention to the best cold vegan treat in the city. No, it isn’t Humphrey Slocombe’s soap-or-Robitussin flavored sorbets.* It’s the soy gelato at La Copa Loca on 22^nd and Capp!!! The flavors are pretty limited; generally, they’ll have vanilla, espresso and chocolate available. According to their site, they also have hazelnut, but I’ve never seen it! You can also get La Copa Loca soy gelato in milkshake form at the St. Francis Diner.

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Congrats, you scored a sweet $500 rent-controlled room in a pre-1970 building on 22nd and Valencia. Now all you have to do is put it up on AirBnB for $150/night, crash at your girlfriend’s place, and join San Francisco’s elite class of weekday-Dolores-Park-hangout-ers, right?

Not so fast. Dave Crow tackled this very question on the latest installment of Tenant Troubles on SFAppeal. Mr. Crow gives an informed and thoughtful answer, per usual, and rants a bit more about endlessly greedy landlords, per usual. Go Dave!

Short answer: if your landlord is willing to give his/her blessing in writing (good luck with that one), then “yes”. Otherwise, you had better hope he doesn’t have a computer with an internet connection. But do read on.

[via SFAppeal, photo via despairbnb]

We received the following email in our inbox, which describes a real bummer of a situation a group of now-former housemates is currently experiencing due to the alleged continual negligence on the part of the landlord to address pressing maintenance issues that ultimately resulted in a dangerous fire.  The best  advice I can offer in this case is probably to contact the SF Tenants Union, but perhaps some of you might have better ideas.  Full story continued after the jump:

On Monday July 23rd at 6:30am there was a two alarm fire at 3316 26th Street. The fire was caused by faulty electrical wiring and was sparked by a broken bathroom ceiling fan that had gone long unfixed by the building’s owner. While the fire itself caused only a small panic for the rest of the tenants of the building, the damage to the unit it which the fire started has left it’s occupants displaced.

I, as you may have guessed, am one of the said dwellers. Though we contacted our landlord several times regarding various issues with the property, e.g. outlets that had sparked, broken bathroom ceiling fan, persistent shower clogging, non-operational smoke alarms, she never seemed care to address them. In our own fault, we were unsure of how to proceed outside of nagging and felt that paying $2,500/month for a four bedroom apartment was probably going to warrant some code breaking. However, this proved consequential…

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Has it really come to this?  On one hand, I kind of admire her spunk and outside-the-box thinking.  It’s soooooo damn difficult to find anything on Craigslist these days.  I had a room open up in my place and got over 100 responses to my Craigslist ad in the first few hours before I made like Gordon Ramsey and shut it down.

On the other hand, this is really depressing!  Anyway, check out the FB page and offer any advice/condolences/hate here.

Now that word’s all over (internet) town that Woody Allen is filming his new movie here in SF and even specifically in the Mission at times, and we’ve even argued over which one of us may actually be Woody Allen, some are beginning to wonder, what does Woody in the Mission sound like?

“Ping pong is so tiring, all the running around the table, I want a calmer sport, like getting home from Dear Mom with my wallet still in my pants.” – Woody Allan Hough.