My financial situation is such that I'm looking for ways to curb my spending.  Booze is almost entirely eliminated from my diet, and I've cut down to only eating Mexican fast food two days a week.  Still, it's not enough.

So in an effort to cut back all the money I blow on food and drink in exchange for free coffee shop wireless, I decided to try out the free, public wifi at Mission Branch Library.

Below are my notes from the hour-long experiment:

Sketchoid three tables down currently counting stacks of crumbled up bills and stuffing them into an envelope.

Pregnant Ray Charles has now fallen asleep at the table.  I believe that's the aroma of plastic bottle tequila and mouth cancer.

10 minutes of solid snoring.  A 70-year old H.M. Murdock dressed in corduroy seems agitated.

Man continues snoring.

Bald Burner/potential Trader Joe's employee in a Hawaiian shirt just checked out a Spanish romance audio book.

Upon further inspection, he lost to meth.

My accomplice reports that while I was in the bathroom, a “strange man” kept circling the table, eyeing my laptop.  Eventually he “muttered something about a password” and left.

I think the other guy next to me just drooled on the June 2008 issue of Condé Nast Portfolio magazine.

Important man currently using weathered flip phone on speaker.

I think Ray Charles's water just broke.

Oh.

I haven't gotten any work done.

Next time I want to hang out with some creepers looking to steal my laptop, I'll try getting my work done on Muni.

Wendy MacNaughton spent some time documenting the good life at the 5th and 6th Street intersections of Mission Street for The Rumpus.  The piece involves a hot mess of street portraiture, SRO history, and feral animals, but some important takeaways involves what you'll typically overhear:

And what you can see and smell:

The whole thing is worth a look, if only so you can ogle at every gritty detail in its full-size glory.

Google updated their Mission Street View photography over the summer and the gems keep coming.

(Also, be sure to check out how that second scene plays out.)

[First catch by 9-eyes, second by Hood Rat Stuff]