Mission Mission

If someone throws hearts up on the phone lines in your neighborhood it means there’s a drug dealer with a crush nearby.

Photo by Silicon Valley executive and Mission blogger Brian Frank.

Local chamber-pop (a thing) band Foxtails Brigade posted this totally precious xmas-themed music video a couple days ago and it already has 12,000 views! Check out these mopey San Franciscans if you’re into stuff that’s totally cute.

After noticing this Bender’s patron’s intense focus and agressive stance, we conducted a short interview to learn more about this bit of pinball tachnique that we all intuit but we never really think too hard about.  Watch:

http://vimeo.com/34037924 

Our buddy Elizabeth S. shares the good news:

Some sweetheart gave 18th Street a hanukkah present this am! Swings on the sidewalk in front of Faye’s and Birite ice cream. Kids are psyched!!!!

Make the most of the city’s sparse offering of bike racks. (That was a hint, San Francisco.) Four bikes on one bike rack, one bicycle centipede. Just make sure you’re all friends first.

Let’s all just take a year off and go traveling through Southeast Asia or something. Right?

[via Idiot Tempers]

This coming Friday the Lower 24th Street Merchants and Neighbors Association is putting on the first annual Las Posadas.

Join in 24th Street’s second annual community celebration of Las Posadas, a Latin American tradition of the Christmas season. Meet at the corner of 24th and Capp streets at 5:45 on Friday, December 16 for a procession and singing. The procession will finish at the Mission Neighborhood Centers building, 3013 24th Street (on the corner of Harrison Street), where there will be pinatas, more singing, and free food and drinks. This is a family-oriented event, but all people are encouraged to come. For more information, contact info@lower24thstreet.org .

Facebook event page here.

Mission Local last week reported on the fire:

The building that caught fire Thursday morning, critically injuring two, has a long history of building code violations and a pending report in which it is “deemed unsafe,” public records show.

In a notice of violation dated Jan. 5, 2009 — a complaint that’s still pending and unresolved — the box labeled “unsafe building” is checked and, among nine violations, “there are no smoke detectors,” the report states.

That proved disastrous on the morning of Dec. 1, when a fire broke out in the upstairs unit at 3356 24th St. Residents said that others who smelled the fire woke them up just after 4 a.m. No one remembered hearing any alarms go off.

Twenty-three tenants living in two adjacent buildings were evacuated.

Read on.

The benefit party will have music, food and a photobooth, as well as a raffle and other entertainments. RSVP and invite your friends!

This company is trying really hard to make you think of sorbet.

Seen on Mission Street.

Hey, look, a map of San Francisco!

Waaaaait a second, something’s different about this. <insert Wayne’s World time travel music> It’s Google Maps, 1853! Behold PastMapper, an utterly epic work in progress on the part of @bradvertising, bringing the 1853 Coast Survey map to life and geotagging the 1852 city directory on top of it.

In the 1850s, the Mission was where you went to party and drink on the weekend. The Mission Plank Road (the curve of which BART follows today) was completed in 1851.

There was a toll — just 25 cents for riders on horseback, 75 cents for two-horse wagons, one dollar for a four-horse team! (What a bargain compared to BART or Muni.)

Well, not so fast — a dollar in 1853 was worth about $30 today. A glass of ale cost 12 and a half cents, and the typical fine for drunk/disorderly conduct was $5.  Needless to say, lots of folks hoofed it along side trails, cutting through the sand dunes and Hayes Valley.

Anyway, the 1853 is only the start for Pastmapper.  I have it on good authority that the much more expansive 1857/1859 Coast Survey map (with much more of the Mission) is on the to-do list.

Pastmapper: bringing you yesterday, today!