Mission District

Happy Thanksgiving from the Vampires MC

Last night was one gnarly scene at Bender's.  For some ungodly reason, the Vampires Motorcycle Club decided to do burnouts on a frozen turkey for an entire hour, which, as you could imagine, smelled lovely.  Following the unbridled debauchery, they strapped the mauled carcass to some unsuspecting person's bike rack, much to the delight of bar patrons and chain smokers.

Verdict?  The show was mouth-fuckingly delicious.

Cute Overload: Street Art Edition

I'm really digging the versatile nature of this guy.  For example, if you ditched its dueling vagina ears, it could be any woodland creature.  Slap on a tail and it's a beaver.  Ditch its tail, it's a hamster.  Run it over, it's brunch.

Notes From The Gauntlet

SFMOMA's blog, Open Space, is letting us know what you'd collect if you lived on Capp St. for 17 years:

The Gauntlet” is what my partner, Cliff Hengst and I have long dubbed the block of Capp St. between our apartment and our art studios in the Mission. On any given day you can find— through the obstacle course of trash, rotting food, feces, needles, and other junk— random personal ephemera: scrawled notes, posted messages, discarded family photographs, and abandoned letters. I even once found a box of bizarre Chinese “gentlemen” magazines from the early eighties (Score!).

The whole thing reads like a bizarre version of PostSecret set on a block with warehouses, homelessness, prostitution, motorcycles, crack, and The Uptown.  Check it.

Valencia Storefronts Playing Giant Game of Dominos

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed a recent uptick in businesses leaving the stretch of Valencia from 16th to 18th.  Just this fall we've seen five shops hit the road:

  1. Mariachi's Taqueria closed Oct 1st. (reports indicate a Russian Hill sushi place is opening a second location in the vacated space).
  2. Z-Barn (for lease).
  3. Bombay Creamery and Bombay Bazar closed November 1st. (the future of the space is unknown)
  4. Amore Pet Supply shuttered less than two weeks ago (for lease).
  5. John's Jaguar Service recently relocated to Ceser Chavez.

And this is all on top of Levi's Workshop and Weston Wear closing over the summer (and Abandoned Planet before that).

Some people who think they own the neighborhood will call this gentrification, but make no mistake—this is anything but gentrification. The metaphoric battle for Valencia was lost long ago, even if people fight tooth and nail for token victories.  What this trend does do is speak volumes of the character transition that the Little Street That Could is undertaking.

See, Valencia has always struck me as fairly representative of (modern) San Francisco.  An overpriced tapas restaurants (soon to be an overpriced Italian restaurant) sitting across from taquerias.  A local furniture store near a posh fries place.  Galleries next to realtors and community centers.  A chain Thai restaurant on the same block as a liquor-free music venue and a publisher.  Cheap books, cheap Ethiopian, and cheap sandwiches a stone throw away from Range and a car mechanic.  And let's not forget all the street art, bike lanes, bike shops, schools, and appliance/supply shops

Now, I understand some locals recall the street in the '80s as being “dumpy” with “only a handful of places to listen to punk music and grab food,” so this change is nothing new.  But the recent bloodbath says a lot.  Hell, we're trading one of the best, non-pretentious ice cream places around so we can have stores that sell artisan bread and cheese.  Little Otsu is on its way out and Lost Weekend Video may soon be following.  Meanwhile, as MrEricSir notes, “Slanted Door” is moving back in:

    

All this doesn't make me angry.  I don't even think I've earned the right to be angry.  Plus, I love Tartine as much as the next person, Delano's cheese selection isn't much to be desired, and this is a town were change (progress?) is inevitable.  If the invisible hand doesn't reshape Valencia, surely an earthquake or a fire will.  That said, I still reserve the right to mourn the loss of Birthday Cake flavored ice cream and being able to gawk at British imported cars on lifts.  After all, if we lose all the shops and spaces that makes the neighborhood interesting and replace them with more unaffordable food, who's going to really want to hang out here?

Pregnancy is the New Hangover

Some lass scrawled this keen observation onto the woman's room at Bender's.  I now know that next Whiskey Wednesday, I'll have to encourage all my female friends to cut their blow with RU-486.  Wait.  Hold on. Guys can't get pregnant.  So what's the new hangover for guys?  A beer belly?  Child-support??  Flying someone to Switzerland??  Enlisting in the National Guard????

Also of note, not everyone was as impressed with this seminal work:

Finally, can someone please fill me on what the “I Fucked” and “Dad, you're…” graffiti is all about?  I hope it concludes with going to Church.

(Thanks Jamie for the snaps!)

More WikiLeaks Street Art Going Up on Valencia

This is easily one of the smartest wheatpastings I've seen on Valencia in some time.  “Sandwich” took stills from the leaked video of two Reuter's staffers and numerous other unarmed civilians being murdered (commonly named “Collateral Murder”) and overlaid gameplay from Halo 2 on top of them.  Surely a commentary on the soldiers featured in the video, whose impatience while waiting for orders to open fire displayed an utter contempt for human life, as well as modern warfare in general.

As this is Sandwich's second piece of street art to go up this month, it looks like we have a new political street artist roaming around the Mission who is quickly upstaging the more imfamous figures out there.

Standing in the Rain

If you're not on Twitter, you might not have known that it rained Saturday.  And what a spectacle it was!  While most rational people were hiding under overhangs and complaining, the bartender of the 500 Club walked out of the bar, jumped onto the street and just stood their looking up in complete awe.  Perhaps this was his first bath in a while.

San Francisco's Other Cat Murals

The entire internet now knows about both the rad “Lazer Cat” mural on Divis and the “Invisible Bike” mural downtown, but there are plenty of other cat murals worth checking out:

Balmy at 26th.  I'm not sure why there is an insect dancing in front of the cat or why the cat would want to eat/yawn at said insect or why the cat doesn't have lazer eyes KILLING the insect, but I dig it.

Orange at 24th, from the guys at Telephone and Soup.

Poplar at 26th.  You can also see a larger version of this badboy on flickr.

This last photo was shot by Octoferret.  I remember seeing this in Neillie and 23rd (Noe Valley) a few years ago, but I don't know if it's still there.  We can only hope the artist returns to bomb the rest of the city in response to the latest outbreak of Koi Fish.

What am I missing?

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