Mission Mission

This is quite a thing, filmed yesterday right here in the neighborhood. It looked dumb at first, but then I ended up watching all 11:26 of this guy Flamenco, apparently a local business owner, walking up and down 24th Street telling us about his platform. He’s gonna create ”trillions of jobs” and ”legalize every immigrant” — and that’s just the beginning. It’s the most impassioned marginally intelligible stream-of-consciousness stump speech you’ll see all year (maybe):

If he gets on the ballot I just might vote for him. (Hopefully he goes into greater detail about his plans for abortion and gay marriage in his next campaign video.)

(Thanks, Jaison!)

There you have it! Hard-hitting media criticism!

(I don’t actually know if they inventing anything. Tried googling them to find out what they were reporting on exactly, but “Bile 5″ returned no relevant results. Cool name though.)

[via Zoë Banks]

Sexpigeon explains:

Should probably be pitching my startup right now, but I’m from California so it’s all day-drinking and texting around to see if anyone wants to bike out to the beach. [link]

Dang. He’s got us pegged I think.

[via Nuzz]

Fresh & Easy, the rapidly expanding supermarket chain that combines the charm of an expensive Trader Joe’s with the mystique of a cheaper Whole Foods, has been approved by the Planning Commission to take over the old Delano’s space. Convenient location in an area where supermarkets are sparse, so for the moment I’m for it. It’ll also have a nice parking lot for the seven of you who drive.

Curbed SF reports:

The Commissioners added a condition that they could only sell beer and wine, since “most kids are not trying to steal wine at the grocery store”. The project was approved 4-3, with the condition that Fresh & Easy must apply for WIC as soon as the moratorium is lifted, and they must aim to meet a 100% local hiring goal.

Read on.

[via wstrvlt]

Our pal C’mon Pony spotted this Sacramento Bee feature in a news rack over the weekend, so we decided to look it up online. It’s a pleasant read, and, surprisingly I guess, hipped me to something I had no idea existed:

Another unexpected pleasure (at least for the customers, if not the proprietors) is finding four specialty bookstores housed above a discount paint store on Mission Street. To enter, you must find a call-buzzer intercom, state your intentions (“Uh, to, like, browse for books”) and wait to get buzzed in. Then you climb two flights of stairs and get to Vahalla Books (first-edition fiction), then climb one more flight to the troika of Bolerium Books (radical politics), Meyer Boswell Books (collectible law tomes) and Libros Latinos (scholarly Latin American and Caribbean books).

Upon entering Bolerium (motto: “Fighting Commodity Fetishism With Commodity Fetishism Since 1981″), co-owner John Durham looks at you with a mock stink-eye.

“Oh, you found us,” he said, crestfallen. “We don’t get many walk-ins.”

Who knew? Read on.

[Photo by C'mon Pony]

The Believer takes a look at the phenomenon in a piece titled “Haterade“:

[M]any readers seem to be approaching their commenting privileges like teenagers with newly minted driver’s licenses. Belted in by anonymity and often distracted by the equally reckless ravings of their peers, they take potshots, spread untruths, and, at their worst, spew racism and bigotry that would put a professional writer out of business in a nanosecond. In so doing, they spread a rancor that can eclipse not only the original article but also the comments of readers who take a more constructive, civil approach. They take the very privilege the internet has afforded all of us—the privilege of equal opportunity, instant expression—and spit on it, making the very notion of “speaking your mind” seem almost like a dirty practice, the national pastime of the lowest common denominator.

SOUNDS FAMILIAR.