After the Department of Public Health left Zeitgeist no choice other than kicking the Tamale Lady to the curb, Supervisor Campos' staff scrambled to find Virginia Ramos a permanent home.  The result of that effort is now taking place in the form of a $155,000 Indiegogo fundraising campaign for a permanent shop.  The details:

Because Virginia has been saving money for the last 20 years she will be able to pay for the majority of the Tamale store. Supervisor Campos is helping her find a vacant store front but she will need $150,000 to help build out a commercial kitchen in her new restaurant.

If everyone in San Francisco who has eaten one of Virginia’s tamales donates what they are able we will help Virginia’s dream come true!

Unlike the usual form of gift-for-donation scheme employed by almost every other Kickstarter/Indiegogo campaign, there will no rewards, gift certificates, thank you notes, or other such alt ROI offered up—this is just a donation to Virginia's beloved tamale business coming from your heart (we can only assume Supervisor Campos' splashing of his name all over the fundraiser comes from the heart as well).  But, lest you forget forget who this is you're donating to, the campaign offers up a reminder:

In early 90s Virginia realized that her day job as a domestic worker cleaning houses was not earning enough money to send her 7 children to college.

Virginia learned to make Tamales from her Grandmother when she was growing up in Mexico – so to make extra money she began cooking tamales in her kitchen after her house cleaning work was done. During the evening she would fill an insulated cooler with her delicious tamales and travel from bar to bar selling a hot home cooked meals to hungry folks all over San Francisco.

Virginia is often referred to as an angel, a saint, or our Lady of the Tamales not just because she seems to miraculously appear when nightlife patrons need something to eat the most – but because she is known for her hugs, a shoulder to cry on, and her role as a surrogate grandmother to the people of the Mission – in fact she often wears a t-shirt that says “I don’t know you but I love you”.

[Indiegogo | Photo by Chris Brennan]

As you have no doubt seen/heard/read/watched, The Developers have begun the demolition that'll precede the construction of an eight-story '70s bowling sign-looking condo project.  Allegedly, the tear-down alone will take an entire month, because breaking shit is hard.  And whether or not you agree that this development is a good thing or not, at least we can all agree it'll give us a month of solid photography?

[Photo by Mission Local]

My favorite is “fuck yuppies,” because we all know that only yuppies watch that hoity-toity Hollywood shit.

[via Mission Local]

The Tamale Lady's kitchen.

Within hours of news breaking that Zeitgeist kicked the Tamale Lady out of the bar, city officials and local non-profits scrambled to bring Virginia Ramos' beloved trash bag of tamales up to code.

While the cause of The Tamale Crackdown remain murky, the Department of Public Health remains at the root.  According to a report by Inside Scoop, the Department didn't explicitly demand Zeitgeist oust Virginia, but they see her as an “illegal vendor, plain and simple.”

However, during a recent health inspection of Zeitgeist, the inspector specifically brought up the Tamale Lady:

“They said that we as the business are being held responsible for the quality of her products — and that means if they come inspect and find anything wrong with what she does, then they will hold us responsible,” [Zeitgeist general manager Mareike Pittman] says. “So if something is really wrong, they could close the kitchen, and if they do that, then we have to close down everything because we need a kitchen to sell alcohol.”

According to Nate Allbee, legislative aide to Mission Supervisor David Campos, the issue stems from Virginia's usage of a private, unregulated kitchen in her home.  As seen in the biopic rockumentary Our Lady Of Tamale, Virginia can be seen preparing her nightly haul in cramped quarters no different from any other rented apartment in town.

“There's an entire group—almost exclusively in the Mission—that includes the bacon-wrapped hot dogs on Mission Street and the Tamale Lady etc., that prepare their food in home kitchens and on the street, and that's totally illegal,” Allbee told us.  “We turn a blind eye to it because everyone loves them and no one is getting sick from their food.  But, we cannot work with the Department of Health to legalize and regulate them [because of their use of unregulated kitchens].”

Fortunately, Supervisor Campos is leading the charge to remedy this.  His office has already been in contact with La Cocina, a Mission-based non-profit incubator for immigrant food entrepreneurs, who are gearing up to get Virginia into a commercial kitchen.

“La Cocina is happy to host her and have wanted to work with her before.  They have an empty, licensed kitchen where she could make her tamales, allowing her to continue selling around the neighborhood.”

It remains to be seen if this development would be enough for the likes of Zeitgeist—and the Health Department breathing down their necks.  However, Allbee tells us that they believe they found a loophole in the city's regulation that classify tamales as wrapped, prepackaged food because of their corn husk, enabling them to be be sold with the same legality as packaged Cheetos.

(If you haven't watched Our Lady Of Tamale yet, do so:)