Life

Video FINALLY Sheds Some Light on the Life of Four Barrel Coffee's Owner

Ever wanted to know about the day-to-day of Four Barrel Coffee owner Jeremy Tooker? Of course you have! And lucky for you, the new YouTube series “American Hipster” (which we had anticipated would be pretty “meh”) delivers a surprisingly sincere portrait of Jeremy, painting him as a fairly normal dude self-aware of Four Barrel's pretension.

(Also, is this the crystal ball into the future for the successful 20-something Mission kids as they crawl into their 30s? Total workaholic sporting tattoos who does cool dad stuff with mixed race kids all while lamenting the inherent pretentiousness of their hipster-targeted business? Whoa. Is there a Never Never Neverland?)

Who Gave Less of a Shit About Earth Day: the Mission or the Marina?

Alex sent us the above photo Saturday night in an email titled “Marina Scum on Marina Green” and described the gnarly scene:

Went biking today across the Golden Gate Bridge. Saw loads of people enjoying the great weather and drinking on Marina Green. Came back, and this is what Marina scum does to our city!

Tourists were disgusted. I told them it's just one neighborhood. Don't judge.. to harsh.

So a bunch of trash was lying around the Marina Green and when the sun went down, left behind piles of actual garbage? Horrible, for sure.  But as someone who loves ripping on the Marina at every opportunity, what I'm about to type pains me terribly to write: it's not just one neighborhood.  Well, not completely, at least.

Observe:

According to mavens over at Mission Local, this was the scene at Dolores Park Sunday morning “after Recreation and Park Department staff had consolidated much of the trash into piles” (and our hero can collectors did their thing).  Naturally, the old farts that are slowly dying around the park are using this 'wasteland' as evidence that it's time for Ed Lee and his goons to send the police marching in Dolores to whip the young punks that cherish those 13.7 acres into shape.

But, really, is Dolores Park's trash situation that bad?  It's gross, yes; but just look at what those savages to our north have to deal with.  And considering there were umpteen thousands of people getting casual in Dolores all weekend long, this seems like a “best case scenario” to me.

So, can we all just agree to maybe try a little harder to do the right thing and start blaming the Marina kids for our trash woes?  I hear they're kinda messy…

UPDATE: Andrew Dalton has a nice rant about this over at SFist.

Who Else Isn't Feeling Rhea's New Signage?

Don't get me wrong, Rhea's is a personal favorite of mine and they can do nothing short of drastically overcharging to get me to stop eating there.  But part of the magic of the place was that a nondescript corner store dished out sandwiches that caused you to gush superlatives without a hint of exaggeration or irony.

Let's compare:

Now that looks like a place that sells 40s of Olde English to bums.  But inside?  So much more.

That's what always did it for me: their aesthetic nonchalance screamed “fuck foodies, this is a hole for motherfuckers who want to eat a damn good sando and enjoy a tallboy of piss while doing it.”  It was always hidden from those not in the know, despite being smack-dab in the middle of the fanciest of streets in this part of town.

Feelings matter, and now I feel like I'm eating somewhere rather than just eating.

Argh.

Whatever.

Who wants to go grab lunch early?

Side note: we've been hearing some rumors that Rhea's is opening a second location on 24th.  Anyone care to confirm?

[Second photo by Pete Johnson]

Police No Longer Down With People Peeing Openly in Dolores Park

DVTDL? reports:

Ever since mankind ceased ambulating about on four limbs, and began walking this earth on two—man has peed on his god given ground. For thousands of years, man has micturated upon the earth.

Well not in Obama’s America. In #ObamasAmerica, the police state tells you where you can and can’t pee. And if they don’t like you choice of location, they write you a ticket.

All that “Obama plotted 9/11” mumbo jumbo aside, is it really fair to ticket people for skipping the gargantuan bathroom line altogether and tinkling on building itself when the city puts literally no effort in providing ample facilities?  I mean, it's the warmest weekend of the year, the park's packed, and sometimes you just gotta go.

[Photo and reportage by DVTDL?]

Gaggle of Pink Gorillas Bustin' Moves on Valencia

Was this some sort of gorilla guerrilla protest against Taqueria el Buen Sabor's meh flavors, or merely a spontaneous pink apeshit dance party?

UPDATE: Ed Casey also caught video of the mob in Union Square, noting:

There was no music and no discernible message… Just a pack of pink gorillas doing some sort of busted ass ring around the rosie. 

[Photo by Dexn and Flexn]

Occupy Wall St. Protester Jumps In Front of BART Train, Somehow Doesn't Die

Around 4pm yesterday, a washed-up William H. Macy-looking character decided he was 'sick and tired' of big bank's corporate greed and jumped in front of a southbound BART train, somehow not getting hit by it.  So, with his fragile life intact, he went on ranting and apologizing for making people late for a solid 5 minutes before chillin' out with the third rail:

Admist all the excitement, the notoriously trigger-happy BART PD deployed a shotgun-equiped army to deal with the situation.  And deal with it they did.  Eventually pulling the guy off the tracks, cuffing him, and letting people make their boring journey down to Daly City.

[Thanks for the heads up, Tuffy!]

In Other News, The Mission is Still Over

Oakland Local's Justin Gilmore is over the Mission and wants to tell you about it:

San Francisco is a place that offers at least a semblance of social life in the streets and has a mass-transit system that, being at least semi-functional, can get you home even after chasing large doses of MDMA with multiple Irish carbombs, resulting in an uncontrollable throwing up of copious amounts of last nights frozen pizza onto strangers who you had drunkenly mistook for childhood friends. Who doesn’t want to live in a place where you can simply exit your apartment, walk a few blocks, and end up at a bar filled to the brim with a battalion of apparently creative, interesting patrons? Or, at least, so went my daydreams.

As it stands, the reality is much different. Upon exiting BART and walking down the streets of the Mission, it becomes apparent that San Francisco has transformed in ways that I cannot appreciate. Newly Ipe-planked luxury condominiums with fancy, all glass, automatic underground garage doors, and heated post-industrial concrete polished floors, sit adjacent to coffee shops whose patrons sip on $6-7 dollar coffee while they guiltily donate some small, insignificant pittance towards “saving the third world” on their new high-end Mac gadgets.

In fact, it’s almost as though yuppies had gotten bored of the suburbs and decided to move to the city, only to bring with them the worst parts of the place that they now claim to loathe. Walking down almost any SF sidewalk, you can see what is in fact the real blight: the late-thirty-something upper-management Google/Wells Fargo employee who, armed with a six-plus digit salary and a lengthy history of family money, recently demolished some jenky apartment building in order to have it reconstructed as a suburban home disguised as an edgy urban loft. [Read on]

My daydreams also involve not having to ride BART after multiple Irish carbombs, so I totally get where this guy is coming from.  So, what are we going to do about the yuppies?

[Photo by ClockworkGrue | via MissionMission]

Tutorial: Get Thrown Out of the Mission's Scummiest Dive Bar

From what I'm told, getting thrown out of The Uptown into the dark underworld of drug abuse and prostitution (aka Capp St) is a rite of passage for any 'Mission Hipster.'  Once a guiding light in a sea of chaos, The Uptown has transformed itself into the intersection between a clogged Dolores Park toilet and a chichi Tijuanna donkey show.  That is to say, I love the place.  But getting ejected from a bar with that has urine-scented couches for seating is hard work.

Take one Friday evening some weekends ago. By the time I walked in the door at 11pm, I was told there had already been four fist fights, a pool cue snapped in half in an effort to procure a weapon, and someone had their cane confiscated by the bartender for repeatedly beating people with it.  Yet, no one was asked to get the fuck out.

Let that soak in for a minute.  Some cripple was stripped of his right to mobility for relentlessly bashing people with his gimp stick, but the bartender was good with everyone staying put.

Clearly, getting tossed was going to be no easy task.

After procuring my eviction elixir of choice (tequila, with a Tecate back, naturally), I sat my peace, love, and cruelty-free vegetarian ass down in a puddle of piss-warm beer (let's be honest, it was probably piss) on the bench next to my friends.

“I dunno what you're talking about,” I tell my thoroughly entertained friends. “Everything seems pretty chill.”

“Just wait, this game of pool is about to end.  Some motherfucker is definitely getting punched.”

And right they were.  Within minutes, two guys had leapt to their feet, ripping their shirts from their bodies sending buttons flying everywhere.  But the scene had become so commonplace that the bored bystanders couldn't even be bothered to watch as shit unfolded.  It wasn't until the two actually started sparring that someone jumped in to break them up.

At this point, the bartender silently popped her head into the room, glared, and went back to slangin' drinks.  The gladiators dressed themselves with their tattered rags and retreated to social comfort of their respective crews.

That was the story of the night.  People started shit, the bartender-cum-substitute teacher pussyfooted around the situation, and so on and so on.  No one was getting asked to leave.  No sir—no way.  Fights?  Pssh, people get shot, like, for real outside.  Who gives a fuck about some swinging fists?

But then some crazy psycho girlfriendpersonsomething came into the picture and bros'll-be-bros turned to bona fide shitshow.

Whoever said whatever to her is unbeknownst to me, but the blonde-haired twig-like CCA-wannabe lost her shit.  Grabbing everyone's drink in the vicinity, at least a dozen in total, she started throwing them at her boyfriend's feet, shattering every single glass on the ground in a spectacular display of inaccuracy and athletic ineptitude.

As the lovers barked at each other, the courageous bartender came over, janitorial gear in tow, and politely requested the pair “calm down” as she swept up the mess.  But such a request was denied—denied!—by the Bonnie and Clyde of shitbaggery.  The dude, ever so offended, pulled his pants down to show what he thought of the fucking place while the bartender escaped back to the bar:

One samaritan, rightfully concerned by the shards of glass everywhere, approached a nearby dog owner to warn her about the paw-mangling hazard and suggest she carry her pup out.  The conversation carried on friendlily enough when outta no where the human puppy lighthouse was shoved. Then punched.  Then pushed up against the wall.

“MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?”

The girlfriend was back and mad as hell: how dare someone point out the aftermath her glass-shattering aggression?

My idiot friends and I traded looks that silently communicated, “Maybe this shit is starting to get out of line?,” and “I'm pretty sure Bender's doesn't have a cover tonight.”  With that, we started chugging back our beers to make an exit.

Then, another roar at the pool table.  The couple, once again bored with battering strangers, were trading smacks.  Shit was getting tired—these guys needed to fuck it out and get over it.  So, like the adults we are, we spontaneously started chanting “FUCK! FUCK!” at the quarreling sweethearts.  The back of the bar agreed, anxiously hoping anger would make way for an unplanned amateur Kink.com iPhone shoot, and quickly jumped in on the chant.

Right then and there, the bartender leapt over the bar, right index finger snarling in my direction, “You! Get the fuck out!”

“Me?  ME?! Take one look around…”

But who am I to argue with the authority of a bartender?  So I threw up my hands in the most exaggeratedly perplexed way possible and headed towards the door.

As I made my way out of the bar and looked back at the psychotic CCA lover trying to choke the life out of her shitbag messenger boyfriend on the pool table, I realized I finally made it—I finally had been kicked out of The Uptown.  By doing almost nothing at all, I accidentially cracked the code for what it takes to get tossed.  I didn't need to punch anyone or destroy bar property or touch my bum to the furniture; all it took was whipping a thirsty mob into a demanding chant for a public display of hate sex.

The seemingly impossible task of getting booted out of the shittest Mission dive happened.  A true life achievement unlocked on an otherwise hollow Friday night.

After all, it's not every day you get thrown out of the bar you named your blog after…

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