Mission Mission

Reader Alexis sends us a note about an article in Concierge, a magazine I’ve never heard of before, titled “Ten Things Not to Do in San Francisco.”  The gist of the article is this: if you want to gawk at the youth and their “counter-culture,” you should avoid the Haight and go straight the Mission, home of “the real San Francisco-now experience.”

“Today weekend hipsters with day jobs in biotech have moved in, but the vibe remains decidedly experimental.”

Are “weekend hipsters” the new “weekend warriors?”  I think I just retched in the back of my mouth.

Somerville, MA:  I never spent much time there when I lived in Boston, but it is sort of a dystopian Mission District.  Baby strollers and dogs mixed with white kids in flannel drinking tallboys.  That said, they have some pretty epic street art, especially from one guy “on walls.”  Enjoy.

Crab Happens

All this inclement weather has got me reminiscin’ about warmer days foreign lands.  Take Puerto Jimenez, Costa Rica: usually known little town to pick up supplies before hiking through the rainforest, sleeping on remote beaches, and maybe accidentally stumbling upon a sea-turtle hatch.  But, really, it just has great street art.  Its park benches and buildings are covered in solid painted jungle scenes.  However, the real gem is finding some random house with Voltron on its walls.

Despite this unfortunate scene at the staging area, Critical Mass Seattle was tons of fun. The mass itself was about a tenth the size of even a modest San Francisco turnout, but it sticks together real good, up gnarly hills and over heavily trafficked bridges and in and out of a thoroughly present police presence.

And before things got underway, Food Not Bombs Seattle handed out peanut butter and homemade plum jelly sandwiches. Size wise, SF’s event may be way more impressive, but nobody ever gave me a peanut butter and homemade plum jelly sandwich.

Seattle is nice.

Lots more pictures after the jump:

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I’m serious, berlin’ is one of the better reads on the internet. This week, they puzzle over how a dog in their neighborhood manages to mount its poop up on walls all along their block. WTF! Link.

This week on I Heart Street Art, we learn how important stencil art is to the Moroccan political system. Link.

Becca checks in today from India, to show us a bunch of pictures of gnarly tie-dyed fabrics and the bike looms used to make them. Link.

Previously:

Becca in Guatemala with Blender Bike, Laundry Bike and Peanut Butter Bike

From Ramona‘s profile of Chez Guerre:

Many believe that bringing higher end restaurants into war-zones will lead to gentrification and eventually to democracy.  “It gives people a reason to go to a neighborhood that they wouldn’t have been caught dead in before, or rather where dead is the only way they would have been caught there.”  To decrease the risk of being caught dead on your way to his restaurant John offers a complimentary armored transport service.  But he’s convinced that the surging popularity should be attributed as much to the promise of an entirely original dining concept as to a general death wish.

Read on.

“Infrastructure for public romping is an unsung casualty of today’s ultra-litigious American society,” begins a powerful and eloquent treatise on playground policy over at berlin’, the web’s foremost authority on Berlin. Do read the rest.

So asserts the first edition of Overheard in the Bay Area. If SoCha is SoCal, sign me up. SoCal rules! Korean tacos! The beach! Bros in beanies!

(Photo of my friend Sarah posing in front of a quartet of bros all wearing beanies at the Live Wire in San Diego by me.)

Previously:

Los Angeles, Bitches