I once was having myself a tea in Philz and overheard a social media professional declare “I like MySpace because it hasn't been gentrified yet.”  After I cleaned up the vomit and tears on my face, I actually thought about what that idiot said and it made a whole lot of sense.  MySpace's slogan is “a place for friends” and I'm fairly certain Facebook's is “I have autism.”  MySpace is where you discover grimy punk rock from Oklahoma and Facebook is where your aunt uses four exclamation points to help describe how cute one of her seventeen cats is.  Like the rest of us, MySpace showed a bunch of promise while it was young but never went anywhere.  It's the underdog in life; how could you not kinda like it?

So there I was outside of Three Twins the other day, stuffing my face with Lemon Cookie ice cream (which, btdubs, tastes insane) when I saw this Google tag smack on the sidewalk.  I couldn't help but recall that afternoon in Philz and MySpace.  Is repping Google really what people want to be known for?  Why not throw support behind someone a little less fortunate?  Poor Billy G. could use a win one of these days, even if that win comes in the form of a Bing tag outside of an organic ice cream shop.  Plus, Bill Gates is the Bono of technology—namely, everyone hates what he's selling but kinda respects him for helping charities.  On the flip, Google just whores out your privacy and makes products you actually want to use.

So, Lower Haighters, next time you have the urge to pick up a rattle can and rep a search engine, why not show Bing a little love?  Do it for MySpace.  Do it for the underdog.  Do it for poor Billy G.

Mayor Moustache getting on his knees and begging Twitter to stay in SF, Biz Stone worried about getting mugged on his way to work, a cowboy on fire, Twitter climbing the ladder to Heaven and high-fiving tax evading companies like Google and GE, and vegan food?  This clip has it all.

Last night, we were unfortunate enough to run into Apple's CEO Steve Jobs while getting a tour of the Kink.com Armory. Despite looking a little frail, Steve seemed genuinely excited to be there and was particularly interested in the prop room.

However, the entire tour was made awkward and uncomfortable by Steve's presence.  At every turn, he gushed over Kink.com and their dungeon of devices. While examining the mechanical sex machines, he could be overheard mumbling that it would be “interesting to integrate this technology into the next iPhone.”  Walking through the sets, he babbled about wanting to inspire lust in his customers just like Kink does.  “I want people to literally orgasm while holding the iPad 3.  Are you getting it?”  At one point, a couple on the tour feigned a sudden attack of food poisoning and made an early exit, but Steve pressed on.  “If we could capture this kind of passion in the next OS, we'd experience full market penetration.”

After the tour, we caught up with Steve and asked him why he was so fascinated by Kink and the 97-year-old Armory: “For years, Apple's slogan was 'think different,' and I cannot think of a company that thinks more differently than Kink.com.”

Geographer playing at the SF Embassy.  Happens to be the only cellphone pic from the house that wasn't taken with Instagram. (pic by aGreatNotion)

Thanks to SXSW, the past week of crowd-free bars and restaurants in San Francisco sure was nice.  Hell, I think this was the first St. Paddy's day in years that Mission bars were not completely nuts.  And while a bunch of our SF neighbors were in Austin running around from show to party to bar to panel, meeting whomever and forming contacts until they passed out in their friend's chair at the Econo Lodge, a 150 or so Mission and SOMA kids grouped together at the SF Embassy.

The Embassy is an outpost for San Franciscans to enjoy San Francisco while being somewhere that isn't San Francisco.  The Ferocious Few, The Frail, Geographer, and Sugar & Gold all performed at The Embassy.  Local companies such as Trumer Pils and Popchips hooked 'em up with sponsorships.  Of course, most everyone there was a San Franciscan.

Wired Magazine caught up with the organizers of the Embassy, whom call themselves “Ambassadors” and are given roles at the space (such as “Minister of Transportation”), to get additional details:

Organizers passed out buttons last year so those affiliated with the SF Embassy could find each other in the giant festival’s crowds. They also enlisted Twitter’s Mark Trammell, who used to make shore-leave guides while in the Navy, to create a field guide relating San Francisco bars to their Austin counterparts. This year, they’ve created passports, pins and shot glasses, and set up each of the 11 rooms in their cluster to represent one of the San Francisco’s neighborhoods.

It was clear from the beginning that a group of that many Bay Area techies couldn’t get together and not create something more than just a crash pad, said Micah Saul, a Google ontologist and the Embassy’s minister of housing, who recruited his Metaweb colleague James Home to help with organizing after being invited by Benveniste, the chief ambassador. […]

It’s also a lot more fun. Talking with the Embassy’s organizers, it begins to feel like they’re a group of professionals planning a summer camp for adults. They talk of turf wars between “neighborhoods” (apartments), making new BFFs, having San Francisco bands play shows that they’ve organized and basically bringing what they love about San Francisco to Austin.

Maybe I'm missing the point, but I thought SXSW was all about immersing yourself in the Austin experience rather than broadening the SF bubble?  What about hanging out with people from Austin on their turf? The local bands? The local bars? The local corporate sponsors?  I kid.  But maybe these kids should exercise a little more modesty before anointing themselves the ambassadors of San Francisco.  To quote SF Embassy co-founder Gabriel Benveniste in Wired Magazine, “This is totally fucking self-aggrandizing, but I believe San Francisco is one of the most important cities in the world right now.”