Further proof that the rents are too damn high, you guys! These days even your local neighborhood yoga teacher dude can't even afford a brick and mortar location for his practices! What you're looking at here is a self-proclaimed Yoga Riot, which you can now find in Dolores Park on Saturday mornings.

“Hey guys, I tricked all these people into thinking they're exercising!”

Kudos to these folks for remembering to bring their $45 “yoga mats” (aka flaps of recycled plastic) to protect their bums from the residual urine and malt liquor that fertilizes the grasses of Dolo. But what is this, synchronized sunbathing? They're doing what we do at Dolores every weekend, only they're doing it on colorful little squares, and way earlier in the morning. Any time the SFPD wants to crack down on these public displays of “inner zen” or whatever is fine with me. 

I've been thinking a lot lately how there hasn't been enough innovation in tortillas.  Flour or corn… maybe infused with a gentle hint of whole wheat, roasted red pepper, or green food coloring.  What a snooze.  I have a budget, so why can't I have my dream?

I want a tortilla crafted by an expert chef and his young apprentice, slowly hand-making each and every tortilla with the finest, locally-sourced farm-to-table organic ingredients in their gritty yet sanitary workshop.  See, I should feel proud knowing that my dollars are going directly the craftsmen—nay, artists—themselves, not some polluting big business.  It should glisten with pride, that dream tortilla, literally lighting up my Instagrams with freshness and flavor…no filter, baby.

My mouth? Overwhelmed with subtlety.  A splash of orange zest, a dash of fennel… is that cinnamon? Oh baby, oh baby, I think I just had a foodgasm.

What's that, you say? My dream tortilla already exists?!

Mission Artisan-Style Cornhole Tortillas, where have you been all my life?  It's like the gods themselves made these with me in mind.  And these cornhole tortillas are a good source of fiber?  Explosive.  Do you accept Square?

I don't think it's necessary to drive home the fact that last night's Mr. Mission Competition at Elbo Room was inherently lame—that was fairly obvious.  But being inherently lame myself, I went to check it out anyway.

It began like any other quality event begins: with your author pounding back multiple margaritas while dozens of people stood in line for 45 minutes, waiting for the doors to open behind schedule.  And after growing tired of watching people wait in line, all bored and boozed up, I decided it was time to walk past the overwhelmed door guy and head upstairs.  Let the games begin:

Upon hitting the event floor, my senses were overwhelmed by the scent of cleanliness and the giggles of weirdos drinking their first PBR since college.  To break it down, the crowd was an interesting mix of roughly 15% snarky bloggers, 15% innocent bystanders, 10% participants and their entourages, and 60% Pinterest enthusiasts.  But I guess that's the demographics of Valencia Street nowadays, so no big.

The pre-event was largely defined by the entrants schmoozing the crowd, playing skee-ball, and having a good time.  And things were definitely looking up for the competition.  But then it started.

It kicked off with a dude in a red bandana that I'm pretty sure isn't a Norteño introducing the DJ and event judges: Gabi Moskowitz of BrokeAss Gourmet, stand-up comic and genius Twitter user Alison Stevenson, and some other chick.  The crowd seemed none too pleased with the judges, entirely withholding their applause.  I assumed this was a cue to boo said judges, but that just ended up being an embarrassing social faux pas.  But I digress.

The MC then turned his attention to the contestants, all of whom approached the stage by strutting themselves up a lesser-human-lined runway (with the exception of Mission icon Deep, who rode his adult-sized tricycle up).  While this portion was fairly unremarkable, credit has to go out to skeeball champ Joey the Cat for rocking a full tiger-print suit and Corner Store George for approaching the store with a posse in tow, as if he was about the wrestle the shit out of everyone else.

The competition started off with a track stand contest, which is when the event took an immediate turn into suspect territory.  Four of the six competitors struggled to stay atop the bike for more than two or three seconds—one contestant looked like he had never even ridden a bike before.  But the other two passed the test, with the clear winner flipping the audience off in celebration.

Our attention then turned to street food—a bacon-wrapped hot dog guzzling contest. This was gross as shit, but one contestant opted to forgo the calories and spend the allotted time slowly dressing up his dog in condiments, a move wildly applauded by the foodie types.

But, to be brutally honest, the show was becoming overwhelmingly unbearable at this point.  The games felt more like a “cool dad” contest than what would define The king of the neighborhood.  I kept thinking of what these guys should be subjected to, like:

• Best criticism of a bicycle.
• Superior illogical hatred of the Marina.
• Who can list the most street names for cocaine in 60 seconds?
• Best freestyle rap battle against an inanimate object.
• Who has the least amount of money in their wallet?
• Most apathetic sense of style.
• DJ Dance Party: best 20 minute dance mix.
• Most revolting reaction to a free Chipotle burrito.

But instead, they were readying themselves for a Dolores Park summer fashion show, so I got on the fuck outta there.

UNLEASH THE FURY:

We live in a world of restaurant review oversaturation. The second some cool new place like Mission Chinese Food in San Francisco is discovered, its swarming with writers at the Times, Bon Appetit, GQ, and any other place that pays a food critic ungodly sums of money to live like a God. The end result is that such restaurants become overrun with critics and cameramen from Bourdain and the Food Network and you, the common man, will probably have to wait in line for six hours just to get in the fucking place. Food critics don't help readers find restaurants anymore. They RUIN them.

I say all this with the full understanding that most Yelp reviewers are fucking idiots. There's obviously a place in this world for professional food writing. But at this point, it feels as if the entire food critic culture has dissolved into one giant circle jerk, with writers hanging out with chefs and chefs hanging out with writers and chefs and writers judging reality shows together and living inside this bubble of obscene decadence that's completely disconnected from the everyday dining experiences of regular people.

Well, shit.  On one hand, it's easy to dismiss this “woe the common man” criticism as baseless, given MCF's humble beginnings as a cheap food truck parked on a smelly Mission St. corner—never mind their amazing charitable givings to the food bank.  But every time I walk past Mission Chinese with the hopes of delighting my mouth with heaps of Szechuan pickles and thrice cooked bacon, I'm confronted a giant gaggle of idiot food blogger pontificating about the so-called “food truck revolution” outside and walk right past to a cheaper-but-still-remarkable meal at Yamo or Big Lantern.

It wasn't always that way though.  When they first opened, I remember just walking up Lung Shan on a weeknight and sitting right down for dinner, paying a small sum for one of the most innovative meals around.  But that is an increasingly-distant memory, now that Danny Bowien is busy playing rock star with Vice and Bourdain.  Really, the only hopes a “common man” has to getting anywhere near the Mission's most sacred dinner is calling some bike messengers to go and get it for you, just so you can eat it out of a carton on your couch while watching last week's episodes of The Daily Show.

Was this the food critics' fault?  Did they vault these guys into the limelight and prop them up as Gods, making their food worthy of wasting 2 hours of your life on a shitty Mission Street sidewalk?  Perhaps.  Or maybe it's just that fucking good.

[Photo by Nicole Wong | via Grub Street]