Mission Mission

Photo credit: The Detox Market Facebook page

I’ve been meaning to go into the Detox Market since they opened between 21st and 20th on Valencia. Our friends at Vegansaurus said nice things about them and they have some lovely window displays advertising vegan products. But let me be honest here: the word “detox” grosses me out. It makes me think of those embarrassing friends of friends (we all have them) who go on a weekend drinking and taco binge and show up to Sunday brunch only to order a side of fruit and proclaim that they’re “detoxing.” Fuck that. I hate that! They’ll spend that whole day eating fruit and drinking some sort of filtered lemon water and cayenne concoction talking about how it does “wonders” to their “system.” It is gross, but I digress.

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In continuing efforts to remind you that they’re still not open (but possibly working on it), La Rondalla has taken to giving out either compliments or tips, depending on who you are:

Um, guilty as charged?

Because A) this bus has taste and knows what Flavor is and why it still matters no matter what you think; B) said flavor is the flavor of toungey white lady skinny dipping in the salsa; and C) it was founded by Ron Swanson’s great great grandpappy. Maybe.

Tomorrow is 4B4B! (That is, Four Barrel‘s 4th B-day!) There will be free coffee and free food, skee ball just like last year, a photobooth, some animals to touch, and more.

Here’s more about tomorrow’s anniversary festivities from Four Barrel’s manager Nicky Koch:

To celebrate four years of serving the coffee-drinking denizens of San Francisco, Four Barrel will be throwing our annual birthday bash on Wednesday, August 22nd, from 7am to 4pm. As we do every year, we will be giving away free coffee and espresso drinks all day long. And yes: the drinks are 100% free, no joke. We’ve also arranged for a few friends to help us add to the fun: Glass Coat Photo Booth will be setting up one of their free photo booths from 12pm-4pm, and, as always, any photo strips that people leave with us hung on our bathroom photo wall all year. Also, there will be two Skee Ball units in the back for people to square off against one another, courtesy of local Skee Ball champ, Joey the Cat. And at noon, we will be serving free slices of delicious Tartine cake and free scoops of Humphry Slocombe ice cream. For the kids, we’ll have a small petting zoo set up in one of our parklet corrals, courtesy of Little Explorers Mobile Petting Zoo, and, for the lunchtime crowd, Del Popolo, an incredibly beautiful mobile pizza cart, will be posted up outside if people want some food to go along with their lattes. It’s going to be a hoot.

I don’t know about you, but I love hoots — it’s the sound that owls make.

This just in: the Rite Spot Cafe, one of my favorite spots to grab a burger and watch a Japanese cowboy belt out Jimmy Rodgers tunes, is wrapping up its renovations and opens on September 5th. They are actively booking music acts for the month, so it looks like their nightly live show format will remain the same.

It has been closed for about a year for “serious or repeated violations pertaining to vermin infestation.” Translation: roaches. Well, let’s hope all that was taken care of.

The only advice I would offer these budding entrepreneurs is to raise their prices! As you can clearly see, they were completely sold out of lemonade by the time I got there, but I still managed to snag a delicious cookie for a reasonable (and apparently market-balanced) 75 cents.

They were also offering advice in the form of “oblique strategies” for just a quarter, and not being one to turn down insight from some genuine hood tweens, I received this little scrap of zen:

Cover your nether regions, one angry clerk at Pay’n Save (18th and Guererro) is taking his hatred of the lazy to the streets:

Hey I’m not crazy about lazy people either, but I gotta say: corner store clerks aren’t exactly the most shining example of hard workers, unless you count sitting on a folding chair next to a box fan for hours and sighing heavily when someone asks for double-A batteries “working”.

I kid, I kid. Thanks for all the Tecate and coconut juice.

Woah, did you know you can “walk” through Bi-Rite using Google Maps? I didn’t either, until I accidentally dragged the little yellow Google dude on top of it. See for yourself.

It’s surprisingly high-resolution. You can even zoom in and read the sandwich menu. Glad Google decided to preserve this snapshot of history. In 10 years we’ll be looking back at this and saying, “wow I remember when a 2″ x 2″ block of artisanal cheese only cost $7!”

Anyone know any other places that have this enabled? I want to live vicariously through my web browser as I work all day in an Oakland cubicle.

Well, as far as we can tell, La Rondalla isn’t any closer to reopening since the last time we checked. It’s clear they missed their projected “by June at the latest” launch date.

However, they are continuing their long tradition of putting up mysterious signs with vague references to current events in order to demonstrate that they are still alive:

But wait, are these really elaborate clues about the fate of the restaurant? Let’s analyze:

“Summer time blues”: Well it is summer, but why the blues? Are the blues about acquiring the necessary permits to tack up dangerous amounts of tinsel throughout the interior as they did in the past?

“No kid hungry”: Is this alluding to some kind of after-school meal program that they plan to offer?

Woah, that was quick. Less that 1.5 months after we checked out the brand new Popo’s pizza on 24th, it has closed. I’ll bet most of you never even got to eat there. This comes from Popo’s facebook:

On July 10th, Popo’s Pizza was closed due to a disagreement between Charles Hopkins, creator of Popo’s Pizza, and San Francisco Ventures LLC, the company that owned and operated Pizza Di Mano. Moving forward, Mr. Hopkins will no longer be associated with San Francisco Ventures LLC, who will be operating the business at 3331 24th Street in San Francisco. All original recipes and staff have left with Mr. Hopkins.

Doesn’t exactly sound like a clean break-up, judging from an update from Friday:

So a little up date on whats happening to popo’s …..besides trying to keep all my equipment Harold (ted) hand president of San Francisco Ventures LLC..witch ran pizza di mano is now trying to sue me for $50,000.00 …. i guess some people just cant make $$$$ from there own ideas.. oohhh well updates soon thank you all.

Oohhh well.

Update 7/30: This comment was just left from “SF Venturese” who appears to be on the other side of the story:

As always there is two sides to every story but when funds are missing from the bank account and cannot be accounted for, it’s time to pull the plug on an idea or person. Yes we also told him to sell slices.

Sheesh. Remind me to never get into the restaurant business.