Cracky Old Mission Guy dropped this bomb on us yesterday:

I've lived in The Mission a long time, and I've been going to The Tenderloin a long time for various reasons, and I have started to feel like I have got it all backwards all along — I should have been living in the Loin and visiting the Mish. They are both shitholes, but The Tenderloin is more honest and less tense about it.

Now, I wouldn't rather live in the TL, but I think COMG might be onto something.  Sure, the Mission might be safer and more gentrified, but it still isn't the Eden of the West Coast that it's hyped up to be.  Between all the vintage clothing stores, gourmet ice creameries, and moms trying to turn Dolores Park into one big playground for their kids, it still has it's crackheads, crime, prostitution, litered sidewalks, empty storefronts, and payday loan shops and liquor stores on every corner.  Yet people in the Mission are far more protective of their image than that of the TL.

Now, there's nothing wrong with some pride, don't get me wrong.  But at the end of the day, residents of the Tenderloin paint murals about the grittiness of the neighborhood, whereas it's all rainbows and ice cream carts in the Mission.

(photo by Lulu Vision)