Pets & Animals

Karl the Frog

Mission Street's Pop-Up Pond is Now Full of Frogs

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

The biblical storms which have soaked the Bay Area over the past few months may have finally turned apocalyptic. The Mission District—traditionally home to humans, pigeons, rats, and not a whole lot else—has a new neighborhood pet: frogs.

Mission Crater Lake, the pop-up pond that has sat on the corner of 22nd and Mission Streets since the fall, has been emitting a cacophony of croaking from its resident Kermits in recent days. As one tipster put it, the corner “sounded like a Florida swamp” on Tuesday night.

Last night, there was at least one gentrifrogger still making his presence known:

Our new amphibian neighbors are squatting at the site of three structure fires that left more than fifty predominantly low-income residents displaced and one dead. The previous building, which also housed Mission Market, Popeye’s Chicken, and several other businesses, was quickly torn down after the third fire out of safety concerns. The demolition left behind a hole in the ground that has become our new frog habitat.

It’s not entirely clear where the frogs came from or how they arrived at this busy corner of the Mission. But given the recent flooding and everything else terrible happening of late, this plague seems to be the latest local sign of the impending apocalypse.

Unfortunately with spring and dry months ahead, the frogs can expect a no-fault eviction in no time.

Catfunding

Chip In for the KitTea Cat Cafe, A Warm Place to Get Catty

— By Jackson West (@jacksonwest) |

While the Crowdtilt fundraising effort got off to a bit of a rough start, you can now pitch in a few or a few hundred dollars and help create create KitTea, “one of the first, well, probably the first cat cafe in the United States,” which co-founder Courtney Hatt hopes to open in Hayes Valley or the Mission.

The cafe will be using an ongoing reservation system to keep the space manageably calm for the fostered felines, so now’s you’re chance to book early. Fellow co-founder Benjamin Stingle told the Business Times that the team is hoping to have the first month or two booked in advance.

Look, people, America needs to close the cat cafe gap with China and Russia or we’re all doomed to globadorable irrelevancy. Vladimir Putin is clearly crazy, don’t think he isn’t coming for your kittehs next.  If the good people of San Francisco can’t collectively come up with a $50,000, interest-free loan to sell attachment-free companionship to desperately lonely cat people, we may have already lost.

You have thirty days. Make the right choice.

Bay Area's "Highest Elevated Spiritual Leaders" to Bless Doggie Diner Heads, Other Mutts, on Sunday

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

If you've lived in the Bay Area for longer than fifteen seconds, you've undoubtedly seen this trio of colossal pups being trucked around the city.  But after years of weather, travels, and playa dust, their caretaker needs to restore these 300 pound icons to their former glory.  So in support of the traveling cerberus's $48,000 restoration Kickstarter, they'll be making an appearance in Dolores Park Sunday for a “blessing.”  It all sounds very weird and certainly worthy of your attention:

Join in with three of the Bay Areas highest elevated spiritual leaders as they bless your favorite Chihuahua, Labrador Retriever, Pug, Terrier, Spaniel, French Bulldog, in your life. Of course, this includes the Bay Area's own Dachshunds, the Doggie Diner Dogheads as well! This event is a very special spiritual blessing of the Dogs in support of the Kickstart Campaign to restore the Heads, replace their trailer with a customized “dog trailer” and perform mandatory and expensive repairs to the heavy duty hauling vehicle.

And who's on deck for the ceremony?

  • Sister Dana Van Iquity representing The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence
  • Bishop Joey (Ed Holmes), 1st Church of the Last Laugh
  • Philo Drummond, Co-Founder of the Church of the Subgenius
  • And introduced by Deacon Sebastian Melmoth (John Law), Holy Trinity of the Dogminican Order

The event reminds us that this is all goofy bullshit, noting, “The Sisters, Subgenius and St. Stupid are all long-time Bay Area “spiritual” organizations that, regardless of what you might believe about their relative seriousness, have spread good cheer, whimsical confusion and a lot of fun around SF and beyond for decades.”

It all begins Sunday at 4pm and goes until 5:30.  Bring your own dog, or borrow a wandering mongrel to get in the action yourself.

[Photo by Marc]

Cart Dog: Our New Favorite Neighborhood Dog

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

The Mission is undeniably a neighborhood of dogs, and there's enough amazing ones that it seems pointless to try and choose a top dog.  Yet when we saw this wannabe biped being pushed down 24th Street yesterday afternoon, arms casually crossed and pure business on its face, we couldn't think of a better beast we've seen around.

Let's take a closer look:

This guy is just begging to have a cryptocurrency named after it.

Long Awaited SoMa West "Skate and Dog Park" Breaks Ground

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

After years of delays, the Department of Public Works finally broke ground on the meh-ly named “SoMa West Skate and Dog Park” a couple weeks back.  It's being built below the Central Freeway behind Zeitgeist and we're only going to have to wait until May for it to open.

From the Department of Public Works announcement:

The dog park will feature play areas for large and small dogs, water fountains for the canines and their human companions, synthetic turf, an automatic irrigation system, seating and landscaping. Additionally, there will be lighting improvements and a path that runs through the park from Stevenson Street to Valencia Street.

New Line Skateparks, one of the world's leading design and construction firms specializing in skateparks, designed the SoMa West skatepark. The plan reflects iconic San Francisco skate spots, with a special nod to Justin Herman Plaza. The Arts Commission commissioned San Francisco artist Jovi Schnell to paint a mural at the site. The artwork is inspired by the long-ago shuttered Woodward Gardens amusement park, which was located nearby.

The skate park and dog play area are part of a larger package of SoMa West improvements. The first project focused extensively on making the residential alleyways in the area safer and more beautiful. Plans also are in the works to revitalize McCoppin Hub Plaza, located at McCoppin and Valencia streets.

Of course, anyone who has even watched a dog shit itself in terror at the sight of a skater knows this setup will make for some real interesting “user conflicts.”  (But still, this is a huge upgrade from an underused parking lot.)

You can see more plans of the park in our previous coverage.

Previously on Uptown Almanac: 

Jeremy Fish on Euthanizing Silly Pink Bunny: "He Deserves to be Put Out of His Fucking Misery"

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

Jeremy Fish's Silly Pink Bunny statue has gone for one wild ride over the last month.  When it was announced on August 12th that Silly would be demolished to make way for a new LGBT senior housing complex, Lower Haighters bemoaned the loss of an icon that has welcomed people to the neighborhood for the last three years.  So it wasn't that much of a surprise when, three weeks later, “four or five dudes with good intentions ran off with the bunny in a U-Haul truck,” as Jeremy later recounted.

Despite being stolen in the middle of the afternoon—and while security was guarding the site that hosted the 600-pound statue—there were no immediate leads.  But after hitting up his contacts (“guys who know sketchy guys”), Jeremy eventually tracked it down to the back patio of Emperor Norton's Boozeland, the well intentioned Tenderloin bar owned by a team of guys with a long history of preserving San Francisco iconography facing impending doom.

It seemed as though the community had rallied around saving Silly Pink Bunny, and that Emperor Norton's had stepped up for its preservation.  But Jeremy still has Silly's destruction planned for this Friday.

When we reached out to him to confirm if he was actually going through with the beloved statue's demolition, he was unequivocal:

Yes. Why? Because he is really fucked up, and like a wounded soldier, a sick old dog, or a worn out racehorse, he deserves to be put out of his fucking misery. He got smashed, punched, hated, tagged, painted, then repainted. He got lit on fire. The back was wide open, and as a result spiders moved in the exposed foam, and started a black widow colony. Human beings used him as a toilet hundreds of times. He lost an eye, and a tooth. His head has a huge hole in the top from people climbing up and down him to get in to the elevated crack den called “the treehouse” above the statue. Then it was stolen, and the thieves painfully cut two feet off the back of him. But, most importantly, I paid for the materials to make the bunny, sculpted it, stuck it there, painted and maintained it as best I could, and I want to watch it get smashed. It was only supposed to be there for a year, and it turned into three years. Let's just say I'm satisfying my artistic vision on this project. If you want to save it, make your own damn statue.

Okay then!

The funeral goes down this Friday the 13th (spooky!) at 6pm.  Rumor has it there will be a wrecking ball on the scene.

(And fear not, nostalgic human beings and black widow spiders: Jeremy has been commissioned to erect a 10-foot tall bronze bunny statue at the site of the housing complex.)

Taking Your Dog Out For a Drag

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

I'm appalled at the overall laziness/adorableness of this animal (and impressed at the effort the owner has gone to entertain their insolent dog's inertia), but I have to admit, the bouquet of flowers is a nice touch.

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