We've been hearing about the plans to convert a dumb parking lot at 17th & Folsom into a luscious park for a few years now.  For a while, it didn't sound like it would happen, but all that opposition has been dealt with and plans are moving forward.  SF Examiner reports:

A 31,850-square-foot parking lot at the northwest corner 17th and Folsom streets will be ripped out and replaced with a park featuring native plants, a greenhouse, butterfly gardens, 50 fruit-bearing trees, an amphitheater, a grassy area, and an interactive exercise and play area. The park also will feature bilingual and trilingual signs telling the history of the indigenous people who once inhabited the area.

…“What stands out most to me is that the community wanted not just someplace to play, but someplace to learn,” said Sarah Dennis Phillips, a planner for the project. “It also includes a focus on sustainability, with a demonstration garden to demonstrate water conservation and offer native habitat.”

…“We are looking at this as The City’s first environmental justice park,” [Oscar Grande, a community organizer] added. “We can’t just focus on bettering the environment in our surrounding community. The focus is making this a community space where environmental justice can happen in a fun and educational way.”

Read on.

We mentioned back in March that a couple of neighborhood comics were looking at putting on a festival combining the indigestion of burritos and the healing power of comedy.  They took their vision to Kickstarter, raised the money it took to get the fest going, scoured through hundreds of submissions for comics across the country, and made everything official.  The result of their hard work?  The SF Comedy & Burrito Festival, a three day stand-up fest on Oct 11-13th with over 100 performers in six venues.

The festival features a mess of our favorite local comics (including most of the folks associated with The Business), but is also importing a number of heavyweights from out of town, including Matt Braunger from MadTV, late-night veteran Brendon Walsh (who'll be recording his debut album at the festival), and butt-tweeter Sean Patton.  And in true Mission District fashion, you won't have to leave the neighborhood to see any of 'em.  The festival promoters are taking full advantage of the neighborhood's weird assortment of venue offerings, putting comics on stages ranging from classics like Elbo Room and the Dark Room Theater, to lesser-used gems like Esta Noche and The Polish Club.

Now, festival passes might seem a bit expensive at $55 (and they go up from there when early bird pricing is up on Sept. 15th), but keep in mind it's multiple shows spread over 3 nights and there's free burritos (and rumors of complimentary beer).  Also, it's apparently not cheap to book out three venues for an entire weekend.  So do yourself a favor and get tickets now while they're good and cheap.

Because of my sick fascination with what travel writers have to say about our beloved neighborhood, I tend to read a lot of trite puff pieces from the likes of the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.

These hotel folk often see things about cities and neighborhoods that their inhabitants don't spot.  While we're too busy discussing the details, they see the bigger picture, identifying emerging pop urban trends before any of the locals even know what the hell is happening behind the wheel of the Urban Safari.

With that, today's blurb from Oregon's MIX Magazine is a real doozy:

The Neighborhood Facebook Built

Once upon a time The Mission was the “Mexican neighborhood.” It was known for its cheap bars, big burritos, and the guys on the corner who sold bacon-wrapped hot dogs or baggies of chile-dusted mango slices.

The hot dog slingers are still there, but things are definitely changing. Brooklyn-ization is in full swing. The commerce of cool is booming. Rents are skyrocketing, partly because everyone wants to live in the newly trendy Mission, and partly because of its proximity to Silicon Valley. On weekday mornings, large luxury buses equipped with deluxe seats and Wi-Fi park in strategic locations, ready to truck tech workers south to Apple, Facebook and other high-profile companies each day. The people on those buses are mostly young and are supposed to be wicked smart. They have ample cash flow and highly discerning taste. They’ll wait for hours for a table at a hip Jewish deli, pay $13.50 for a gourmet Reuben sandwich, and then tweet about the experience: “To our right, babies slurping matzo ball soup. To our left, a family speaking Hebrew. Behind us, a pair of transvestites. @wisesonsdeli.”

I know, I know, my initial reaction was to tell her go the fuck on back north, too.  “The neighborhood Facebook built?”  Puh-leeeease.

But once I choked my rising bile back down, I got to thinking that this crazy foodie globetrotter isn't all that wrong.  Is the Mission really a “Mexican” neighborhood anymore?  Well, no.  At least, not if you look at the clientele almost every new business is targeting.  Sure, we still have murals, festivals, hot-dog carts, Spanish-speaking businesses, and, as the author put it, “it’s still possible to get a great burrito in The Mission.”  But things are “definitely changing.”

Does this mean The Mission has graduated from “Latino/hipster neighborhood” to “urban 'suburb'”, adding another chapter to its Native American villages/settler farmland/industrial center/Irish-German neighborhood history?  Perhaps it's too soon for that (I mean, we still have places like The Roxie and Bender's and Clooney's and Casa Sanchez punk nights and art collectives, right?), but this is increasingly how the outside world perceives us.

Around 1:50 yesterday, an aggro Jaguar driver (pictured above with his head smashed into the pavement) ran the stop sign at 17th and Harrison, cutting off a woman in a Honda CRV.  She slammed on her brakes before smashing his mid-life crisis and honked her horn, provoking a First In Class response, Mission Local reports:

The man then got out of his car and ran to open the woman’s driver-side door, said [witness Linda Leery]. After failing to open the victim’s door, the man tore off one of the Honda CRV’s windshield wipers and was able to open her door. He then beat her between five and 10 times with the wiper, said Leery.

“She was screaming and bleeding, and plastic from the windshield wiper was flying everywhere,” said Leery, who then drove in front of the man’s parked Jaguar in case he tried to flee. 

The attacker tried to flee multiple times, so witnesses grabbed his keys and held him down until the police could arrive.  The victim was “bleeding heavily,” but conscious.

No word if the responding officers issued the victim a fix-it ticket for the broken wiper.

[Mission Local]