BREAKING: Mr. Pickle Hostage Situation!

A kidnapper using the alias SenÓr Pepino and  “The Pickler” (on Mission Mission) claims to “have the pickle.”  He also gives us a tip if anyone wants to track him down:

“Hi, I moved to Oakland now since everyone wants to be a fucking detective.”

Also, Ray Potes from Hamburger Eyes explains his involvement with the initial photo posted to the “Cellybrain” flickr account:

whoa!! ive been in and out of town so i havent been able to properly address this. but lots of phone calls about this and i am really trying to figure it out.

check it out, i run a photo magazine called “hamburger eyes”. also run a community darkroom called “photo epicenter”. on our website we have a side blog called “cellybrain”. its runs off our flickr account. people can submit cell phone photos through their phone, either straight to the flickr account, or to my phone or email and then i can forward it to the flickr. it updates the site automatically and immediatly. its just a neat feature for our site that a friend help me setup.

if you look at the flickr page, you can see that the cell phone photos come from all kinds of sources. not just mine.

anyways, people who submit cell phone photos often give out the info so others can post too. ive already notified pretty much all my contacts to find out who actually sent the photo. no responses yet. there was a tag with “mark” on it but the mark i know doesnt send cell photos.

i eat at mr. pickles all the time. i am a business owner. i live in the mission. i have no reason to steal this sign. i too have a huge hand painted sign on the front door of my space that costs hundreds of dollars, and i understand how painful it must be to have such a thing stolen.

i got a phone call this morning that the cops came to our place of business and searched for the sign!!!?? i had to cut my trip short and rushed back from san diego to take care of this.

if you know me, you know that i am always willing to help in any situation.

i saw that you tried to contact me through flickr but since we have it on auto pilot i never need to login to see if i have messages.

i got an email from armand at mission local when this went up, and i told him that i would notify all my people to help me figure this out. which i have done and no response. i have been back and forth between sd and la on photo assignment which is why i havent commented.

i will keep searching, but please understand that i, ray potes, am not a thief.

thanks,
ray