Douchebaggery

Renting an Apartment in the Mission Now Means Bidding on the Place and Offering the Landlord a "Signing Bonus"

This dream could be yours for $3,000 OBO!

Rental prices are going up.  Way up.  And with historically low vacancy rates and new millionaires moving into town, it's a landlord's market.  Take this new development in the world of renting apartments: having to bid upwards of $3k/month for an apartment on Valencia and Duboce.  Check it:

$3000/mo. 1 bd in Mission — ridiculous? Yes. Make offer, let's talk.

Ridiculous rent for a 600 sq ft one bedroom apartment in the Mission?

Even if you can have your pet?
Even if it has lots of natural light, a small working fireplace, claw foot tub, somewhat upgraded eat-in kitchen, including new fridge?

And here is the real deal: WALKING COMMUTE TO CIVIC CENTER AND MID MARKET!

Sounds like a good deal!  What do I need to do to get such a posh pad?

MAKE A BID BY RESPONDING TO THIS EMAIL:

(Your bid will of course be subject to your seeing the apartment).

Your bid should include the following (required):
-monthly rent you are willing to pay (water & garbage paid by owners),
-plus agreement to lease for minimum one year,
-plus your employer name with phone number to verify, and
-last 2 landlords with phone numbers, &
-how many people and pets will reside in the apt, &
-your phone number (we will only respond by phone, not email).
Not required but appropriate:
-info about your pet(s),
-plus info about you — your elevator pitch resume —
-and, if you wish,
—————offer of a signing bonus.
We will see who responds, evaluate the offers, then set up opportunity for top bidders to view the apartment some time between bid close and following week.

Alright, well for that kind of money and effort, what kind of palace are we looking at?

Looks great!  Where do I sign?

Oh, and one more thing:

Thanks for your interest in living in San Francisco's most awesome neighborhood.

What Does the Valencia St. Fire Have to do with Trash Pick-up and Politics?

It's been only a few weeks since a massive fire tore through a Valencia Street building, displacing dozens of residents, and the disaster is already being perverted for political purposes.  How?  By a disinformation campaign by the SF Firefighters and Recology (the city's trash-collection provider) to protect the company's 70-year-old government-granted monopoly status by painting the ballot measure as an assault on our recycling and composting laws.  How darling.

(Oh, and if you are actually interested in reading up on this, the SFBG has a shockingly reasonable analysis of the ballot measure.  You can also read the initiative itself, as well as the Chronicle's dueling opinions for the measure and against it.)

[via Generic]

When I Live in the Mission and I'm Like ...

When I forget to call ahead to Rhea's and there's a 25 minute wait …

Walking into work on Thursday morning after Whiskey Wednesday at Benders …

When my crush checks in on Foursquare at the same bar I'm at …

When I'm at Dolores and the weed truffle guy is out of cinnamon truffles … 

When I'm getting coffee at Four Barrel and they tell me they don't “do” skim milk …

When I walk by a bunch of Capp st hookers …

When my mom calls me after hearing about another shooting on my corner …

When my friend tells me she met her new boyfriend on Instagram …

The City of San Francisco Piles Onto Weston Wear's Woes

Weston Wear isn't just going to be closed down for a week following the May Day Riots.  No, The City felt it necessary to deliver one last “fuck you” to a business ransacked by savages by citing them for graffiti on their boarded up windows:

Way to support local business, dude.

UPDATE: CIty Hall gained a conscious and backed down.

[Twitter | Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Uber to Dispatch Squad of Mexicans to Your Start-Up in Borderline Vulgar Cinco de Mayo Stunt

Remember Uber? That awful Town Car cab 'start-up' that charges you $50 so you can pretend to be Larry Ellison on the way to brunch? The ones that did the stomach-churning “Hipster Thursday!” promotion?  Well shit just got real:

THIS IS WHY PEOPLE ARE SMASHING GENTRIFIED STORE FRONTS ON VALENCIA.

Sorry, give me a moment to calm down.

Okay.

So, Uber's team of marketing eyerolls dreamed up the brilliant idea of shuttling around an “instant fiesta” in “three SUVs” (why not Ford Fiestas?) on May 4th for the low-low price of $100.  Oh yes.  For the cost of two ostentatious joyrides, Uber will delight crowds of dreamy Zynga employees with one mariachi song…whicchh strikes me as just a tad tasteless.  There's a line Mission 'transplants' dare not cross, and they're crossing it.  Sure, it's one thing to evict the Latino community and take their homes, but overtly exploiting them for a marketing lulz?  That's just poor form.

Anyway, have you guys seen my post about Edward Burritohands?

(But seriously, am I justified feeling sick about this, or am I just suffering from a nasty bout of San Franciscan white dumbie political correctness?  I mean, they're getting paid, right?)

[via SFist]

Harmless Occupy Rally Devolves Into Valencia Street Riot

As I'm sure you've already heard (if you haven't, Mission Local has some solid reporting on it, as does Mission Mission), the Mission District unfortunately had its Foot Locker Moment last night as an innocent Occupy May Day rally in Dolores Park devolved into a riot along Valencia Street.  But as Scott Rossi (who seems to have been one of the few sane people in the mob) reports, the riot was not Occupy-related, but a “hijacking” done by mysterious clean-cut kids: 

I believe we [the Occupy protests] were hijacked and it was an utter clusterfuck. It started out as sort of a “pep rally” type thing at Dolores Park, but maybe 20 minutes after we got there, it turned into a march. I tweeted “LOL looks it turned into a surprise anticapitalist march. #osf #oo #ows #dolorespark”. although i frown on the tactic of spraypainting and paintbombing, it was a bit funny to see the normally sneering people outside some of the boojie restaurants in 18th street get a little taste of their own class warfare. that said, what happened once the march reached Valencia was a) the fastest i’ve ever seen a march fall apart in my life and b) the largest concentration of simultaneous D: faces i have ever seen in my life. This is where I disengaged from the march, advised people I was pulling out and they were on their own, and told some people who were distracted or otherwise slow on the uptake that the march was entering ‘smashy smashy land.”

So, rather than describe what happened (since 340958345 other blogs and news agencies will do just that), I think it is more important to point out who did this. But as I’m about to explain to you, I don’t know that I can do that. You see, I don’t know who, the people I’ll dub as the ‘ringleaders’ of the march were exactly. Nobody did. Yeah some of the aggro people we always have to deal with were there, but these guys weren’t it. You remember those asshole jock bullies in high school? Well that was who was leading the march tonight. Clean cut, athletic, commanding, gravitas not borne of charisma but of testosterone and intimidation. They were decked out in outfits typically attributed to those in the ‘black bloc’ spectrum of tactics, yet their clothes were too new, and something was just off about them. They were very combative and nearly physically violent with the livestreamers on site, and got ignorant with me, a medic, when I intervened and reminded them that I was there to fix them from police violence, not protester on protester violence. […]

The other thing that bothered me is the level of destruction and the targets. This was all Bay of Rage Indybay organized, from what I gather, but it was all wrong. Black Bloc goes after state or corporate property not that of the working class and poor. I disapprove of that behavior, as it is not something I would personally engage in, however, this was off. This wasn’t directed against corporations or big banks, with the exception of one single ATM I saw smashed. This was specifically directed against mom and pop shops, local boutiques and businesses, and cars. Lots and lots of cars. I won’t weep for the hipster dives or the WASP nests for nouveau riche white trash, but the working class, poor and immigrant owned places I will. At first it was a few luxury cars, but as I followed the march down Valencia from a distance, it was all types of cars. There was a little girl crying and her mom was holding her and telling some onlookers that people smashed their car windows right in front of them as they were walking to it. She’s always going to remember the ‘mean people’ smashing. Everyone everywhere was really upset and blaming Occupy.

We’ve spent months radicalizing and empowering the Mission, working with and learning from groups who have already been here for decades, trying to use our momentum, enthusiasm and appeal to energize moribound organizations and skittish and apathetic people. We’ve been encouraging people to feel empowered to organize themselves, to get unions for day laborers, to march for and bring attention to our terrible immigration practices, hell the list goes on and on. It’s just convenient that these so called ‘protesters’ acted in such a way to undermine and burn all those bridges we’ve been so carefully building. The destruction was too calculated and precise in it’s seeming randomness to be Black Bloc or even those fucking suburban scumbags who get an anarchist patch at Hot Topic and think that gives them license to come to Oakland or SF and burn shit down. [Read On]

Scott has some theories on who might have been behind this (potentially classified as “crazy conspiracy theories,” but you never know in this crazy world).  But no matter who was responsible (and I'm going to be horribly articulate here), this just plain sucks.

Now, the clean-up begins:

[Photos by Justin Beck and Ert O'hara (who also noted her apartment was smashed to hell despite screaming at the mob to stop)]

Divisive Parents Want to Fence Off Section of Dolores Park for Brats

Ever since that silly playground opened a month ago, there seems to be a real effort to “clean up” the park.  It's been alleged, repeatedly, that SFPD has been trying to make gay sunbathers feel uncomfortable.  Then SFPD came after people who really need to pee.  And someone managed to rouse our city-sanctioned thugs into busting Cold Beer, Cold Water n' crew.

But that wasn't enough.  Oh no.  Now the neighborhood's population of persnickety parents wants to fence off the playground to keep their little 30 pound disasters shelthered from the savage realities of the outside world:

Some parents have said they are concerned that the recently opened Helen Diller playground in Dolores Park lacks a fence to keep out dogs, which can scare, chase or hurt their children.

Andre Kellerman, a neighbor who lives opposite the park, said she recently saw a pit bull wandering in the playground.

“It was just running aimlessly through the playground and it knocked down a toddler as it went though,” she said […]

Jana Thompson, another neighbor living close to Dolores Park, also saw the incident. To her, it feels as though “dogs have taken precedence over kids” in Dolores Park. Several neighbors have written to both the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department and district Supervisor Scott Wiener.

Ugh.  UGH.  UUUGGGGHHHHHHH.

To Scott Wiener's credit, he thinks the people crying for a border fence are 'fucking dumb' (or, to quote, “The playground, he said, is 'an asset to the park,' and 'radically changing its design' would be inappropriate.”)  However, Dolores Park's manager wants to “keep the option to put up a fence” and quasi-community organization Dolores Park Works thinks a small fence “may be a good idea.”

And, sure, the fence “may be a good idea,” but it would cost money and divide the park and make throwing big events more difficult and generally suck.  Instead, why not enact a city ordinance mandating that parents leash their children so our beloved pups can run around without fear of bumping into some unattended biped?

So vote for me this November 6th.  For the unleashed children.

[Mission Local | Photo by Niall Kennedy]

Another Mural Bites the Dust

First things started getting ugly in Clarion Alley in the fall, then 2012 hit and things really escalated with the entire 17th St. Mural getting trashed with vandalism, followed by the Mr. Bubbles sign, and then much of Sirron Norris' work.  Even Balmy Alley has seen many of its works ruined in the last month.

Well, according to DVTDY?, who photographed the above whitewashing following the vandalism, we can add the Alabama St. Mural to the body count.

What remains to be seen is if muralists will persist in painting despite the unrelenting destruction of their works.  The pair of artists interviewed last fall in Clarion Alley stated they had enough and were moving on from Clarion's once sought-after alley walls.  Is the age of murals of graffiti prevention done, to be replaced with horribly boring-yet-effective treasure map-esque lines?  We can only hope not.

[Top photo by Funston]

Pages