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In an obvious attempt to gin up their alt cred, the New York Times recently swung through the Mission during an otherwise "old news" San Francisco bar crawl. (Unless you haven't heard of Vesuvio and Tosca, in which case it is most definitely new news.)  The result?  Rite Spot, a beloved but thankfully sparsely trafficked bar, made their favorites list.  And their enthusiasm jumped off the page:

Rite Spot Cafe looks like a white tablecloth Italian restaurant about to breathe its last.

Normally I'd criticize them for this sorry observation, but if anyone knows anything about having one foot in the grave, it's The Times.

Does this mean fancy, borderline-discerning Times readers will start flocking to an our favorite Italian restaurant that serves $4 whiskey shots?  Is Rite Spot over? (Also, did I really just link to a clip from Portlandia? Can someone start a Change.org petition to have me banned from life?)  We can only hope not.

[via Grub Street | Photo by Ariel Dovas]

Previously on Uptown Almanac

• Rite Spot Cafe: Reopened, But Not Remodeled
• Controversial Neighborhood Dive, Rite Spot Cafe, Shut Down by Health Department

6th and Market has been long known as the place to (hopefully) recover your stolen bike.  But from the looks of it, our city's transient population of afflicted gutter punks has wised up and moved their operation to the more tony neighborhood of Folsom and Division.  SF Citizen uncovered the operation:

They keep their inventory in the four giant tents you can see on this particular block of Division

And their vans, always with the vans.

In fact, these guys are just like the A-Team. You’ve got Mad Dog Murdock on the left there, building away, and there’s B. A. Baracus there on the right with his reverse Mohawk. And Hannibal and Faceman are out cruising in the van looking for more bikes.

Sadly, given SFPD's and the DA's notoriously unfortunate attitude towards arresting and prosecuting bike thieves, we can only imagine this scheme will be met with the very same brand of mob justice that eventually took down Bobby the Bike Thief.

[SF Citizen]

Previously on Uptown Almanac

• "Mob of Folks" Go After Bobby the Bike Thief

While San Francisco's State Senator Mark Leno is busy trying to extend California's last call until 4 a.m., city Supervisor David Campos is taking a much more puritanical stance on alcohol sales. [Campos misspoke, see update below]

"I'm for limiting the sale of small alcohol bottles," the Mission District's supervisor, who hopes to join Leno in Sacramento in 2014, told a crowd of 35 during last Thursday's meeting of the Lower 24th Merchant's & Neighbors Association.  He also stated that they "create a number of problems," but did not elaborate further before changing the subject.

The statement came amidst a discussion about preserving 24th Street's vibrancy, with local merchants hoping that easing the Mission's liquor license moratorium on small, predominately Latino grocers will abate 24th's recent upscale restaurant boom by opening the markets to new sources of revenue.  The current prohibitions on liquor licenses favor large, corporate businesses at the expense of small neighborhood markets, such as Casa Lucas on 24th and Alabama.

Currently, a market must be over 5,000 sq ft to apply for a license--smaller neighborhood markets are prohibited from obtaining one--and obey a strict set of limitations as to what they can and cannot sell.

Campos indicated that he supports allowing all markets, regardless of size, to obtain liquor licenses, but supports controlling what they can and cannot sell for an unspecified public good.  We are left to speculate that banning tall boys is Campos's strategy for fighting alcoholism and vagrancy, which strikes us as a very ineffective and Bloombergian solution to a noticeably declining problem.

We reached out to Campos's staff for clarification on his position, but are yet to hear back.  In the meantime, we're ever-so glad Dolores Park falls outside his jurisdiction.

Updated @ 5:40pm: Campos's aide Nate Albee got back to us and clarified his position.  Campos had meant to say that he supports the ABC regulations as they stand now, which ban "airplane bottles" (usually sized between 1 or 2 ounces) of hard booze and individual beer bottles less than 24oz from being sold in grocery stores, and he merely wants to expand the pool of businesses that can apply for licenses to sell liquor.  Needless to say, his remarks didn't come out clearly.

Campos hopes to file legislation in the coming weeks to allow small grocery stores to sell beer and wine.

Previously on Uptown Almanac

• Listen Bitch, I'm going to put you up on some fucking game right now.
• No Comment Campos Tackles the Valencia Restaurant Moratorium
• Why We Have $15 Burgers: The Mission's Liquor License Ban
• What Will Happen to District 9 if David Campos Moves to Sacramento in 2014?

Google and other corporate shuttles have been disrupting life in the Mission, SOMA, and other neighborhoods easily accessible by the 101 for some time now.  But, despite the oft-repeated claim that they help reduce congestion, pollution, and allow employees to go car-free, it's being found that they're just displacing the congestion from the highways and moving it into our neighborhoods.  Tony Kelly, president of the Potrero Boosters Neighborhood Association, reports in today's Chronicle:

[People driving around the Mission] are commuting here, parking their cars for the day, and then biking, walking or hopping on a private shuttle bus to their jobs. For them, the Mission is their free public parking lot.

San Francisco's parking enforcer, the Municipal Transportation Agency, tells us that on a typical day more than 80 percent of the cars parked on crowded northeast Mission streets arrive from elsewhere.

The situation is particular pronounced in the northeast Mission, where historically industrial streets are not covered by residential parking permits.

The parking crunch would have traditionally lead to a new resident parking district, allowing residents to park (for free) all day long, with commuters having to move their cars after 1 to 2 hours.  As Kelly puts it, "that's been a key part of San Francisco's 'transit-first' policy, which is designed to keep residents' and commuters' cars at home."

However, the city is instead looking to blanket the northeast Mission with parking meters, both on commercial and mixed-use residential/commercial streets, with hourly prices that fluctuate based on demand.

Kelly accuses the city of "turning its back on decades of transit-first policy" at the expense of Mission residents.  But, really, it seems that MTA is just looking to cash in on the commuter's laziness.

[SFGate | Photo by The Tens]

Previously on Uptown Almanac

• Google Shuttle Privilege, Broken Down in Handy Map Form