Mission Mission

This is serious!  Not since the Mr. Pickles saga has a particle injustice gone unchecked for so long!  Put on your Sherlock hats and let’s Scotland Yard this pup!

*Reward is a sixer of Simple Times and an Italian Wedding sandwich.

photo by GrimRaynard (who also has a bunch of other cool shots in his photostream)

Did anyone else spot this in Mission Loc@l?  ”Mr. Pickles in a cowboy hat.”  Cowboy hat? This is the most disgusting attempt at assimilating a Mission icon into American culture to date.

Peep this, East Bay journalism students: if you are going to slam our neighborhood’s favorite pickle’s unfettered sense of style, do it right:

(On a side note, searching for “Mexican Cowboy Hat” in google images is not quite what I expected)

I’m not going to lie, I was just a little crushed to find out that the owner of Mr. Pickle’s last name was not “Pickles”:

Across from Los Jarritos is Mr. Pickles Sandwich Shop, a popular deli that has also continued to thrive during hard economic times. The business garnered some notoriety this year when its ubiquitous sandwich board – a sandwich-toting, sombrero wearing pickle – was stolen. It was eventually returned, said owner Diyana Jwenit, but only after a neighborhood-wide manhunt.

“Everyone was looking for Mr. Pickles,” she said – the police, customers, even the Mission Local blog. One day, a number of police officers rushed into the shop after hearing that Jwenit had been tipped off with an address (it was a false lead).

Eventually, the thief was shamed into calling Jwenit and returned the cutout. She credits the neighborhood.

“It’s the Mission,” she said. “It’s full of great people – everyone helped out.”

(Oh yeah, the article was about the economic times or something in the Mission.  Maybe you want to read it??)

Previously on Mission Mission:

• BREAKING: Mr. Pickle Stolen!
• SFPD: On the Mr. Pickles Case
• BREAKING: Mr. Pickle Hostage Situation!
• UPDATE: Mr. Pickle to be Voluntarily Returned?
• Mr. Pickle Returned to Mama Pickle!

You can only imagine my surprise when I spotted someone walking around Marysville in a Mr. Pickle costume.  I even had the driver of the car I was in do a lap around the block so I could get a second look.

So, when will the Mission get a human-being Mr. Pickle?  Sure, the costume-pickle does not have a sombrero and holsters full of mustard and mayo, but it would make for a much more interesting hostage situation.

Shortly after thaddius_larue tipped us off that someone at Yahoo was looking into the identity of the “The Pickler,” we received detailed account information from a tipster at Yahoo, including name, address and telephone number.  Our source has suggested that the alleged kidnapper once resided in Foster City and is presently employed by a San Francisco Tattoo studio.  This information is yet to be substantiated.  Additionally, Mission Mission has the thief’s Comcast Cable address.

Soon after we received the information, “The Pickler” claimed that he would return Mr. Pickle:

“ill return it jeez, just a prank that has gone too far. never intended to harm him, just found him out on the street at 11 at night and thought it would be funny. he will be home very very soon.”

It appears the saga is nearing its conclusion.  Hopefully we will see our friend on SVN once again.

“Hi, I moved to Oakland now since everyone wants to be a fucking detective.”

Also, Ray Potes from Hamburger Eyes explains his involvement with the initial photo posted to the “Cellybrain” flickr account:

whoa!! ive been in and out of town so i havent been able to properly address this. but lots of phone calls about this and i am really trying to figure it out.

check it out, i run a photo magazine called “hamburger eyes”. also run a community darkroom called “photo epicenter”. on our website we have a side blog called “cellybrain”. its runs off our flickr account. people can submit cell phone photos through their phone, either straight to the flickr account, or to my phone or email and then i can forward it to the flickr. it updates the site automatically and immediatly. its just a neat feature for our site that a friend help me setup.

if you look at the flickr page, you can see that the cell phone photos come from all kinds of sources. not just mine.

anyways, people who submit cell phone photos often give out the info so others can post too. ive already notified pretty much all my contacts to find out who actually sent the photo. no responses yet. there was a tag with “mark” on it but the mark i know doesnt send cell photos.

i eat at mr. pickles all the time. i am a business owner. i live in the mission. i have no reason to steal this sign. i too have a huge hand painted sign on the front door of my space that costs hundreds of dollars, and i understand how painful it must be to have such a thing stolen.

i got a phone call this morning that the cops came to our place of business and searched for the sign!!!?? i had to cut my trip short and rushed back from san diego to take care of this.

if you know me, you know that i am always willing to help in any situation.

i saw that you tried to contact me through flickr but since we have it on auto pilot i never need to login to see if i have messages.

i got an email from armand at mission local when this went up, and i told him that i would notify all my people to help me figure this out. which i have done and no response. i have been back and forth between sd and la on photo assignment which is why i havent commented.

i will keep searching, but please understand that i, ray potes, am not a thief.

thanks,
ray