TROUBLEMAKERS

When I think of the throngs of young drunk hooligans merrymaking down Valencia every weekend, all hootin' and hollerin' and making a gawddamned ruckus, I think of gourmet cheese.  One other neighbor agrees with that and took their complaint right up with the California Alcoholic Beverage Control, which denied Mission Cheese with a permit to stay open as late as 10pm.

Mission Cheese owner Sarah Dvorak explains in a statement to Mission Local:

Our current beer & wine permit only allows us to serve until 8 pm. We had to wait one year from the date our license was granted to apply to amend our hours. We want to stay open until 10, at least on Friday & Saturday evenings. We are constantly turning away disappointed potential customers when we close at 8. Some even think we’re joking when we say we are closed.

Last week we were visited by the SFPD who told us they were happy to have us in the neighborhood & should have no trouble getting the extra hours. Today I received a call that they will be denying our request because one individual in the 100 ft radius believes our business to be disruptive as is. Apparently one person is enough to deny the request.

Don't worry though, Sarah can take it up with a judge, who'll reexamine the case and consider making an exemption.  Until then, enjoy your quiet, cheese fart-free streets.

[Photo by Jen Rizzo]

Groger's Western Store and their crazy barn building thing has been closed up since forever; now someone finally intends for something to happen to it.

It's a big old' building that has just been put up for rent—some 5,200 sq. feet of space with a worn interior, and they have back patio nearly that large, stretching all the way to Orange Alley (which they advise would be great for “outdoor seating”).  And while it's zoned for retail, this place is really screaming for a bar—a bar with swinging, wooden cafe doors that squeak when they're opened and rock back-and-forth shut; that lets the cool summer air breeze on in, day and night.  A bar that serves bland beer in dirty mugs; a bar infested with hovering flies dancing to the tune of the saloon piano…where outlaws go to drink beer, harass women, and get trigger happy when they rob the place. Like that Beastie Boys song.

Reader Chumpguy, who tipped us off to Groger's classified listing, breaks down the cost of leasing this dream:

It's $3.50 per square foot, making it $18,200 per month, assuming the yard is free. That's not out of line for commercial properties in San Francisco, which can go much higher in areas like Union Square. Basically, it would make an awesome restaurant with a large outdoor area, which could pay that amount. This is why burgers are $15.

$18.2k sure sounds like a lot of money for a bar with swinging wood doors, and $15 sure sounds like a lot of money to charge an outlaw for a burger.  But just look at that building—it's screaming to be the best bar in the Mission.

Different Workbook recently unleashed a nice profile of TCB Courier, the local bike messenger service that's about to deliver some sandos to my fucking face:

As part of a planet-spanning cycle messenger community, Chas and his friends witnessed the old paradigm for this type of business stop working. It used to be that bike courier businesses revolved around the financial district of a city. Fifteen years ago, at the height of the dot-com boom, the FiDi neighborhood in San Francisco was served by more than 500 cycle messengers. Yet between the Internet, fax machines, e-mail, and finally a seriously down economy, the traditional cycle delivery businesses began failing. “A dying system,” Chas says. Today, the downtown financial core of San Francisco is served by about 70 messengers.

So what do you do when you love to be on your bike every day and love the global messenger community you’re part of, and you’re watching the old ways of working die? These guys decided to create a company that revolved around a cultural center, not the financial center, of their city, to serve local individuals and businesses, and to provide a less expensive alternative to downtown bike messengers. As they created a service for their neighbors, TCB Courier was born. TCB stands for “takin’ care of business.” Today, they are bigger than expected. The business has expanded as other cycle messengers, living in other neighborhoods, decided they’d like to similarly serve their own neighborhoods. They called TCB and asked to join them and run their own neighborhoods.

Read on.

[Photo by John Daniel Reiss]

Elliot Bamberger has set out to capture the wonder of San Francisco's various neighborhood cultures and art and structure and icons, doing so by filming little cropped blocks of everything nice and piecing it together in one big motion picture collage.  And, as you can see above, he's finally hit the Mission.

Here's what Elliot has to say about it:

The project seeks to preserve the cultural and architectural authenticity of select San Francisco neighborhoods and provide unseen perspectives, sometimes underlining the city's unique geologic landscapes. I have tried to capture culturally significant aspects of The Mission that may continue to disappear due to changes such as those brought on by gentrification. Furthermore, original San Francisco architecture may be altered to conform to the needs of new incoming businesses and residents or destroyed in natural disasters such as earthquakes or fires. Regardless, the relationship between the people of San Francisco and it's unique geologic foundation is ever changing so I would like to preserve the unique culture and architecture of the city within the medium of video as a document of what I have been so fortunate to experience from living here.

To be frank, I wouldn't have watched this entire thing if I wasn't so hungover (it's longgg).  But, if you're also feeling a little rough around the edges, or have some serious patience for art, do give it a watch: