Mission Mission

Local hero the Fog Bender spotted it this afternoon near Church and Market and “nearly shit [his] damned pants.”

If you’re not familiar, the Wikipedia entry on the Toynbee Tiles phenomenon is helpful. Here’s some of it:

The Toynbee tiles (also called Toynbee plaques) are messages of unknown origin found embedded in asphalt of streets in about two dozen major cities in the United States and four South American cities. Since the 1980s, several hundred tiles have been discovered. They are generally about the size of an American license plate (roughly 30 cm by 15 cm), but sometimes considerably larger. They contain some variation on the following inscription:

TOYNBEE IDEA
IN MOViE `2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER

Some of the more elaborate tiles also feature cryptic political statements or exhort readers to create and install similar tiles of their own. The material used for making the tiles was initially unknown, but evidence has emerged that they may be primarily made of layers of linoleum and asphalt crack-filling compound.

[via The Fog Bender on Instagram]

[via Abby]

November 2008. Seems like a lifetime ago.

[Top photo by Brendan O’Connor; Bottom photo by Elly]

[via KronnerBurger on Instagram]

Tired of storytelling events where storytellers just get up and tell a story? This thing’s different.

Corey, Phonographic Memory‘s organizer, tells us all about it:

Phonographic Memory is a storytelling event where folks from the community pick a record from their collection, tell a personal story about that record, and then play a song. We operate monthly at the Bernal Heights Library, but will be doing a special fundraising event at the Knockout. We’ve curated a lineup of contributors to the Bay Area music scene: Dan Lactose (of the seminal group Spazz), Lydia Popovich (comedian, used to manage Quannum Records), Justin Torres (record dealer, instrumental in re-igniting Darondo’s career), and Winston Smith (artist responsible for creating the Dead Kennedys logo). We’ll have DJ’s too, should be an awesome night.

Their website has some podcasts up too if you desire a sneak peek.

Oh and local street photographer The Tens (a fan of the show apparently) sent in this promotional video:

Thanks, all!

I just ingested so much sugar I may start pissing simple syrup.

— Brenna Betts (@BrennBetts) June 24, 2015

Normally DT&D tries to take the guess work out of going to theatre in the Bay Area by providing brutally honest reviews of the shows we see. But we also don’t want you to miss out on what might be a very cool show, just because we haven’t had the chance to review it yet!

With only a two day run of Moments From The Bubble, Or: How The [Google] Bus Stops Here, a playwright-driven community action project created in collaboration with Z Space and the 1 Minute Play Festival, there’s no way we’d be able to review show before the run is over. Given what is currently happening in San Francisco (and even more rapidly the Mission), we thought you might want to see it anyway without our official endorsement.  To help inform your decision here are more details from the event description:

The drastic changes happening to the neighborhoods and communities in the Bay Area is quite staggering. I don’t think the national zeitgeist quite understands what’s happening here. San Francisco is becoming the most expensive city in the world, and it’s at the expense of everyone and everything that makes is special”, says 1MPF Producing Artistic Director, Dominic D’Andrea. Stressing that the work is designed a social “barometer” project to unearth connections in the zeitgeist via themes, ideas, and trends, D’Andrea says, “When we did our annual festival in partnership with playwrights foundation over the past two years, the topic of gentrification was so charged, so present, so immense, that we decided to come back to make an entire other project dedicated to digging into these topics, and what it means for the community. This is our artistic response to what’s happening. It’s part play festival, and part community action.

If that sounds as interesting to you as it did to us, you can check out Moments From The Bubble, Or: How The [Google] Bus Stops Here, this Saturday June 27^th at 8PM and Sunday June 28^th at 3PM and 7:30PM at Z Below (470 Florida Ave).  Tickets are $20 and available for purchase at http://zspace.org/new-work

We’re going Saturday night, so if you see us, say “hi!” Or if that’s too weird, just let us know what you thought of the show in the comments. Hope to see you at the theatre!

[via Ariel Dovas]

[via Otto Venta]

My feelings about Thee Oh Sees are more complex than they once were, but no matter what, sometimes a little Oh Sees is exactly what you need:

Happy Monday, everybody.

The new Oh Sees are doing a 3-night residency at the Chapel next month btw and it’s already sold out.