Mission Mission

The Violent Femmes are playing the Fillmore tomorrow night for what I believe is their first SF show in a long time. After a long hiatus, they went back on tour together last year – they played Coachella this spring, as well as BottleRock Festival in Napa in 2013 (which I saw and was so good), but this will be their first San Francisco proper gig in recent history. You can get tickets and info here. Also, to get yourself pumped up for the show, watch Violent Femmes play “Add It Up” in 1988.

First correct answer wins a prize.

I swear it got there, but this was all I got:

Global warming rules!

UPDATE: Bingo (101 actually) and… omg holy hell!

It’s the spot that was for a long time Specchio and recently became Piattini. It’s big, has two levels — and a full liquor license. Inside Scoop has the scoop:

Expect more details on the new project in the coming weeks, but Ley explains that it will be different from Dr. Teeth — but a complement to both that bar and the neighborhood. In particular, Callen — who comes from a restaurant background — will be spearheading the project. The working name of the new concept is the Buffalo Club.

The plan, according to Devito, is to keep it an Italian-themed restaurant, with a new focus on pizza. [link]

(Photo is of the existing bar at Piattini.)

Remember that period in 2009 or so when it seemed like all we ever did was blog about Weird Fish? Well we haven’t mentioned them in a couple years now, and I’m sad to say this just might be the last time. Mission Local reports:

After two years of trying to revamp Dante’s Weird Fish and open a new place at the site The Corner once occupied, the owner Peter Hood has “thrown in the towel” and sold both businesses to another restaurateur who will install two new places

The Mission, he said, was over saturated and overregulation, like Healthy San Francisco, a mandate that requires businesses with 20 or more employees to provide health benefits for them, made it more taxing to do business. He added that he’s tired of the countless startups such as Groupon and other discounters trying to become middlemen between him and his customers.

“I will say that, across the board, anyone who’s been around the Mission all felt that the pie was getting slightly smaller,” he said about the abundance of restaurants in the Mission. “What can you do there with so many new businesses and seats?”

[...]

“This is not some sort of ‘I am a vindictive person.’” He said. “I’ve loved the Mission. I think it is an amazing neighborhood and I love everything about it. It’s just not very friendly to small businesses.”

(Emphasis mine.) Weird Fish will remain open through the end of 2014. Read on for more quotes and the scoop on the new owner’s plans for the spaces.

And now, a complete history of Weird Fish coverage through the ages:

SF Weekly reported yesterday that two men had been stabbed on Bryant Street the night before, within a few hours of each other. The first victim, a 31-year-old man, was approached by three attackers at 5:25pm, and the second, a 23-year-old man, was approached by eight attackers at 1am. Details were scarce, until this chilling update:

Officer Albie Esparza says in both cases the suspects were gang members and asked the victims who they were affiliated with before stabbing them. Neither victim is related to a gang, police confirmed. [link]

Do you have complaints about the housing crisis and public transit in San Francisco? (Let’s face it, we all do.) If so, join the SF Bay Guardian and SF Transit Riders Union tomorrow for a joint community forum on funding for transit and housing affordability.

Here’s what SFBG and SFTRU have to say about this event:

San Francisco needs more affordable housing, a robust public transit system, and fully funded social services if it is to remain an efficient, diverse, compassionate city. Unfortunately, some political leaders have pitted transportation and housing activists against one another in recent years, particularly so in the upcoming election on Propositions A, B, G, K, and L.

We’ll provide some background for you on how public transportation service and facilities are paid for, and then we’ll examine how the conflict happened, the political tactics that are being employed, and what can be done to bridge the gap along with a panel of activists and experts.

Bridging the Gaps in Transit and Housing Funding
A joint Bay Guardian and SF Transit Riders community forum
Thursday, October 9th, 6-8PM
LGBT Center, Rainbow Room
1800 Market St, SF

Moderators:
Steve Jones and Rebecca Bowe, San Francisco Bay Guardian

Speakers:
Thea Selby, San Francisco Transit Riders Union
Jonathan Rewers, SFMTA
Supervisor Scott Wiener, San Francisco District 8
Chema Hernandez Gil, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition
Amandeep Jawa, San Francisco League of Conservation Voters
Peter Cohen and Fernando Marti, SF Council of Community Housing Organizations

RSVP on Facebook or non-Facebook and invite your friends and other concerned citizens!

[Thanks, Ilyse!]

Former local blogger Ramona tells us all about it:

There is no greater horror (in a life with few horrors) than getting the check after dining or drinking with a large group of people. The worst worst time is when everyone has cash except for you, so they’re like “How about you put it on your card and we’ll give you money?” That innocent sounding “How about…” always ends with you putting $200 on your debit card and them handing you 16 crumpled ones, and you being like, “What the fuck?” and everyone being like “I put in the correct amount PLUS a little extra for tax,” and then turning back to their conversations to leave you to be evicted from your apartment. The best worst time is when some extremely chill person who has never been out to dinner before is like “Just give me your cash and I’ll put it on my card,” and you’re like “Okay,” but are thinking: welcome to hell motherfucker.

Read on for Ramona’s latest check-splitting horror, at an outdoor bar in Brooklyn.

[Photo by Honey Jets]

Our pals Isaac Fitzgerald and Wendy MacNaughton have put together a book called Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them:

Woohoo! And there’s a party for it this Friday in the Mission:

RSVP and invite your friends here. And pre-order the book here.

I have been listening to Sondre Lerche’s music for over ten years, which is a very long time for me. Since 2001, Sondre has released eight diverse, genre-spanning albums, including the jazz-inspired Duper Sessions, and two film soundtracks, including a haunting score for The Sleepwalker, a 2014 film directed by his recent ex-wife Mona Fastvold and starring Christopher Abbott (Charlie on Girls). I have seen him perform at The Fillmore, Swedish American Hall (RIP), Great American Music Hall, Bimbo’s, and a handful of places in Austin, Texas. I have seen him perform solo, with a full band, and everything in between; whatever the configuration, he always impresses with his distinct voice and shredding guitar.

Sondre’s latest album, Please, dropped a few weeks ago. Please was written in the aftermath of his divorce with Fastvold, and with it, he reinvents himself again. The album’s first single, “Bad Law,” was one of my top summer jams, combining a super charismatic dance riff with chunks of distorted guitar.

This Thursday, Sondre Lerche is playing at The Independent. I had the pleasure of chatting with Sondre about his record, upcoming tour, the color of his music, the idea of guilty pleasures, and why San Francisco is his favorite city in America.

MM: Tell us a little bit about your newest record, Please. I read that it was heavily inspired by your recent divorce. What was your process like? How was it conceived?

SL: I started out wanting to free myself from the regular recording cycle. I just wanted to do one song at a time, to be able to record instantaneously and enter into collaborations without having to carry the weight of the whole record. I just wanted to open up a bit. I usually write really thorough songs that limit what you can do in the studio, so I tried to open myself up to surprise, to surprising myself. There was a lot of music I was listening to that I realized comes out of a completely different process, and I was curious about what that is. So that’s how it started, and as I wrote more and more songs, I thought I knew what the record was about. And then all this stuff happened in my private life, that just forced me to reevaluate a lot of things. One of them was what this record was about; all of these other songs just started coming. I realized that certain things were more urgent than others, and the album just changed. I think it came out of the necessity of ventilating and trying to find reason in what is happening to you. And the studio is just the perfect place to figure out stuff, to get it out. I guess it’s a cliché, but it turns out it’s real.

MM: The first song on the record, “Bad Law,” is such a great dance song, despite being quite dark lyrically. What is that song about?

SL: It’s a song that took a lot of time to write. It started with that riff, and then I recorded the bass and drums, which was new – I usually start out with guitar. I had this idea of the sort of paranoia you feel when you pass through customs. As a Norwegian flying into the States, even though I now have a green card and have nothing to hide, I always feel a certain paranoia. So I wanted to play around with that ritual, where you feel so watched and pressured, that in the end you started doubting yourself, and maybe you do have something to hide. Maybe that’s how the police get people to confess things that they didn’t do. In the end, you’re just so worn down. It felt like a reasonable metaphor in the context of the record and everything else.

(more…)