Some mommy blog has set their sights on 826 Valencia, the non-profit writing center and pirate supply store:

Would you let your kid dress up and play rapist? Murderer? Kidnapper? Armed robber? If they're a pirate fan, chances are you already do. And unlike, say, an outlaw cowboy (is there a kid on earth who's still into cowboys?), a pirate is not a rogue version of someone with a decent job. Rape and plunder is the very reason for their existence.

I've been one of the biggest fans of the pirate revival of the last decade. Loved Johnny Depp in the first Pirates of the Caribbean. I think the pirate supply store at 826 Valencia in San Francisco appeals to both kid and hipster parent like nowhere else. And it's cute that something so 1950s as pirates has seen a resurgence. A kid with an eye patch is so quaint — it's like seeing a kid in a coonskin cap.

The post then brings up modern day Somali pirates, asking “is this really a line of work we should be celebrating?”

What if you dressed your kid as a modern-day Somali pirate? With machine gun, hostage, bandanna … Seems pretty twisted, right? It would never happen. Well, just wait a few hundred years, it'll be fine.

Twisted, indeed!

Be sure to read the whole thing for additional comparisons to outfitting your kids in Nazis regalia, Al Qaeda-chic, and Darth Vader, the “genocidal maniac's” uniform.  [photo by Eli the Bearded]

Apparently so!  Admittedly, I don't go to Dynamo very often due to my fiscal opposition to paying two-plus smacks for a doughnut, but they had the back open for their new-flavor release party and it sure is nice back there.  Plus, they're hoping to get wifi in the next month or so, so you'll soon be able to distract yourself from doing real work while hanging out in one helluva beautiful garden:

Oh, and their new peanut butter and banana honey donut?  Delicious.

Funcheap has the scoop:

Dynamo Donut launches their newest donut flavor – a fusion of Project Open Hand’s homemade peanut butter with a banana honey glaze.

To celebrate, Dynamo will give away FREE donuts and FREE Stiegl Goldbrau beer while supplies last. Guests are also invited to name the new donut to win a gift certificate for a dozen donuts.

I'm trying to think of good names, but everything that comes to mind involves dogs licking peanut butter off of phallic objects.  Anyway, tt goes down from 4-6pm today, so brave the rain, hail, and afternoon tornado warnings to get yourself some fresh donut action.

[photo by Matthew Wade Davis]

Outrage!  Mission Local reports that come the first of 2012, Rainbow is getting rid of the 10% discount afforded to SFBC members.  Which, you know, is probably going to cost SFBC a third of their members and a few thousand people a couple hundred extra bucks on produce, vitamins, and adorable ferret calendars.

Why ditch the discount?:

“Our goal with the discount was to help broaden the membership of the SFBC,” says Mason, who handles public relations for the cooperative. The thing that ultimately drove the decision to eliminate the discount, he says, was when the SFBC realized how much money Rainbow was giving away through the discount in relation to how much the SFBC was getting through signing up new members. “They said, ‘Wow. If you just gave that to us, just think of how much more we could do for cycling in the city,’” recalls Mason. [..]

Another rationale behind the discount, Mason says, was to alleviate Rainbow’s parking crunch. The store did wind up having to double the number of bike racks in its space, but it’s still a struggle to find a spot. And while the SFBC and occasional Rainbow cashiers did maintain that people needed to ride their bikes to the store to use the discount, Mason says that biking to the store — or even biking, period — was never a requirement. “It was never about having to show your U-lock or your helmet or whatever. It was really just about broadening their membership.”

I understand their reason (“we can better finacially support SFBC by donating a percent of sales directly”), but I struggle to see how ending this discount will do the Bike Coalition any good.  Most of my friends who were on the fence about joining the org inevitably joined because of the discount.  But hey, between this and ending coupon day, I'm sure this was less about SFBC and more about earning more off your everyday bulk flax purchases.

[Mission Local | photo by shmooth]