Procrastinated on your holiday shopping again? Don’t worry, we did too. Lucky for you, the Secret Alley’s brand new Galallery is hosting a ~ Holiday Art Party ~ tomorrow night for all you slackers, featuring goodies by local artists and designers. Here’s a sneak peek:
Limited-edition lapel pins, from the folks behind Gruen Day!
Treats and provisions for all you boozy rats, from hello, cheetle!
A popular sentiment on a shirt, plus other cute tees and bags from assorted local artists! Plus, so much more!
Finally, a miniaturized version of our favorite local landmark for your household! And it doubles as a shelf and coat rack, just in time for scarf weather. It’s called the Sutro Tower Rack, it’s currently raising funds via Kickstarter, and designer Timothy Seward wrote in to tell us all about it:
While living in the edge of the mission (20th+Potrero) I looked up and saw Sutro Tower everyday. I decided to take my street art skills and put them to the design test. I wanted to blend the beautiful mid-century designs of the past and incorporate my street art flavor. It may be hard to identify the street in this furniture piece, but the playfulness of the soft lines and pop colors are definitely inspired by my murals and my good friend Ian Ross‘ murals around SF.
Here’s a gif of the Sutro Tower Rack in action:
And here’s one of all of the delightful colors it’ll come in:
Are you an architecture nerd, scuzzy ex-mall rat, or a person who loves cool and interesting things? Then you’ll love the first annual Gruen Day, taking place tomorrow, July 18, at the Bayfair Center in the Eastern Bay!
Festivities include talks, tours, nerding out, and hanging out in the food court at Bayfair Center (which, FYI, opened in 1957 as one of the first Gruen-designed shopping centers in the country). There may or may not be Minions present.
1. Their coffee is great!
2. Their food is delicious! (I think about their sardine + fava bean crostini at least once a week)
3. They have excellent taste in men! (see stickers above)
4. Andrea, Cafe St. Jorge’s owner, is the sweetest person!
5. They’re right around the corner from your house (if you happen to be me or my neighbor)
6. They’re giving away FREE COFFEE all day today, to celebrate their 2-year anniversary!
One recent morning, as I was waking up by thumbing mindlessly through my phone, I noticed an unread email. A new veterinary service called VetPronto had found my adorable cat Arya’s blog and wanted to offer her a complimentary house call appointment. “The robots know everything,” I mumbled, dragging myself out of bed.
Later, while sorting through a mountainous pile of receipts (in case you didn’t know, freelance tax prep is one of the seven circles of hell), I came across the file I keep of my cat’s health records. Here were the facts: my cat was due for her next round of vaccines, the Affordable Care Act doesn’t cover feline children, and I couldn’t afford not to take VetPronto up on their offer. Not to mention that being stuffed into a crate and being literally cat-called on the 14L are among Arya’s least favorite activities.
I made an appointment with VetPronto through their website. The day of the appointment, a friendly vet named Dr. Hoppe arrived promptly. Arya was instantly at ease and barely noticed that needles were entering her body moments later. Dr. Hoppe was very patient and addressed all of my questions and concerns, leaving me feeling like a great cat mom. The whole thing was over in under 30 minutes.
Artist, transit activist, and Mission Mission reader Ilyse, whose projects we’ve posted about before, has been leading a series of pub crawls on public transit routes (aka PUBlic Transit Crawls) to raise money for the SF Transit Riders Union. The next crawl takes place this Thursday in the Mission, and in honor of Valentine’s Day, it’s along the 14 bus route.
Here are the details:
Starting Point: 16th/Mission BART Date/Time: Thursday, February 12, 6-10pm
Schedule:
6PM: Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, 2323 Mission St (btw 19th St and 20th St)
7PM: El Rio, 3158 Mission St (at Precita Ave)
8PM: St. Mary’s Pub, 3845 Mission St (at College St and Crescent St)
9PM: Pissed Off Pete’s, 4528 Mission St (btw Santa Rosa St and Ocean Ave)
Read more about the crawl at the SF Transit Union’s website.
After doing the farmer’s market pop-up thing for years, Richie Nakano is finally opening his long-awaited ramen shop tomorrow. The Hapa Ramen restaurant is located at 2293 Mission Street, in the former 99¢ Depot. As a long-time noodle advocate, I headed over to report from the front lines, armed with a fellow noodle-loving lady.
The opening menu features snacky small plates (ribs, a raw fish tartare, a Korean seafood pancake), steamed buns a la David Chang, and with three types of ramen. The restaurant’s namesake bowl, pictured above, is generously topped with pork slabs, nugs of fried chicken, a poached egg, and seasonal vegetables.
There’s also a full bar and cocktail menu, which includes a gin drink involving Hi-Chew tincture and Hawaiian Punch syrup (above, right) that tastes exactly like a Pixy Stix. The bourbon drink on the left contained banana, black sea salt, and cacao.
Above, two of my favorite things I ate: a savory pile of roasted baby carrots and radishes, and an adorable fried chicken-and-pickle steamed bun that, in the most flattering way possible, reminded me of the classic sandwich from my childhood favorite now-shunned fast food establishment.
Oh, and those in-progress booths we reported on awhile back cleaned up real nice:
As we mentioned last month, our favorite spaghetti shack will be taking over the former El Zocalo space (RIP) very soon. And according to Emmy’s Instagram, the (meat)ball is rolling along steadily!
According to their Twitter, SPCA’s cat shelter is positively overflowing with felines, so they’re waiving all cat and kitten adoption fees through Sunday! If you didn’t already know, cats are the best! Here are some reasons why:
Do you have complaints about the housing crisis and public transit in San Francisco? (Let’s face it, we all do.) If so, join the SF Bay Guardian and SF Transit Riders Union tomorrow for a joint community forum on funding for transit and housing affordability.
Here’s what SFBG and SFTRU have to say about this event:
San Francisco needs more affordable housing, a robust public transit system, and fully funded social services if it is to remain an efficient, diverse, compassionate city. Unfortunately, some political leaders have pitted transportation and housing activists against one another in recent years, particularly so in the upcoming election on Propositions A, B, G, K, and L.
We’ll provide some background for you on how public transportation service and facilities are paid for, and then we’ll examine how the conflict happened, the political tactics that are being employed, and what can be done to bridge the gap along with a panel of activists and experts.
Bridging the Gaps in Transit and Housing Funding A joint Bay Guardian and SF Transit Riders community forum
Thursday, October 9th, 6-8PM
LGBT Center, Rainbow Room
1800 Market St, SF
Moderators:
Steve Jones and Rebecca Bowe, San Francisco Bay Guardian
Speakers:
Thea Selby, San Francisco Transit Riders Union
Jonathan Rewers, SFMTA
Supervisor Scott Wiener, San Francisco District 8
Chema Hernandez Gil, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition
Amandeep Jawa, San Francisco League of Conservation Voters
Peter Cohen and Fernando Marti, SF Council of Community Housing Organizations
I have been listening to Sondre Lerche’s music for over ten years, which is a very long time for me. Since 2001, Sondre has released eight diverse, genre-spanning albums, including the jazz-inspired Duper Sessions, and two film soundtracks, including a haunting score for The Sleepwalker, a 2014 film directed by his recent ex-wife Mona Fastvold and starring Christopher Abbott (Charlie on Girls). I have seen him perform at The Fillmore, Swedish American Hall (RIP), Great American Music Hall, Bimbo’s, and a handful of places in Austin, Texas. I have seen him perform solo, with a full band, and everything in between; whatever the configuration, he always impresses with his distinct voice and shredding guitar.
Sondre’s latest album, Please, dropped a few weeks ago. Please was written in the aftermath of his divorce with Fastvold, and with it, he reinvents himself again. The album’s first single, “Bad Law,” was one of my top summer jams, combining a super charismatic dance riff with chunks of distorted guitar.
This Thursday, Sondre Lerche is playing at The Independent. I had the pleasure of chatting with Sondre about his record, upcoming tour, the color of his music, the idea of guilty pleasures, and why San Francisco is his favorite city in America.
MM: Tell us a little bit about your newest record, Please. I read that it was heavily inspired by your recent divorce. What was your process like? How was it conceived?
SL: I started out wanting to free myself from the regular recording cycle. I just wanted to do one song at a time, to be able to record instantaneously and enter into collaborations without having to carry the weight of the whole record. I just wanted to open up a bit. I usually write really thorough songs that limit what you can do in the studio, so I tried to open myself up to surprise, to surprising myself. There was a lot of music I was listening to that I realized comes out of a completely different process, and I was curious about what that is. So that’s how it started, and as I wrote more and more songs, I thought I knew what the record was about. And then all this stuff happened in my private life, that just forced me to reevaluate a lot of things. One of them was what this record was about; all of these other songs just started coming. I realized that certain things were more urgent than others, and the album just changed. I think it came out of the necessity of ventilating and trying to find reason in what is happening to you. And the studio is just the perfect place to figure out stuff, to get it out. I guess it’s a cliché, but it turns out it’s real.
MM: The first song on the record, “Bad Law,” is such a great dance song, despite being quite dark lyrically. What is that song about?
SL: It’s a song that took a lot of time to write. It started with that riff, and then I recorded the bass and drums, which was new – I usually start out with guitar. I had this idea of the sort of paranoia you feel when you pass through customs. As a Norwegian flying into the States, even though I now have a green card and have nothing to hide, I always feel a certain paranoia. So I wanted to play around with that ritual, where you feel so watched and pressured, that in the end you started doubting yourself, and maybe you do have something to hide. Maybe that’s how the police get people to confess things that they didn’t do. In the end, you’re just so worn down. It felt like a reasonable metaphor in the context of the record and everything else.
Ilyse Iris Magy wants you to take a closer look at your city. The local artist is working on a rad new project, Lines Made By Walking, which launches this Friday at StoreFrontLab (337 Shotwell Street). If you’re a map enthusiast, owner of any guidebooks on secret stairway walks, and/or just someone who wants to rekindle your love for this majestic-but-conflicted city, this experiment is for you.
Here’s what Ilyse has to say about Lines:
For five weekends, I will be leading walks from StoreFrontLab to locations around the perimeter of the city, going counterclockwise from North to Northeast. On each walk, we will collectively track points and moments of interest, marking them on the sidewalk with chalk and recording field notes. Throughout the month, we will transcribe these encounters in the same chalk by marking their precise locations on a map projected directly on the wall in the gallery. When the projector is off, this installation will be a scaled representation of the 7×7 mile drawing our marks make throughout the city.
Lines Made By Walking kicks off StoreFrontLab’s 2014/15 season, City Making, a nine-month series of installations, wanderings, happenings, and conversations that look critically and optimistically at San Francisco’s future.
ARTCRANK is putting on yet another annual show of handmade, bike-themed posters designed by Bay Area artists, and the opening is this Friday, September 12, 5-10pm, at SOMArts (934 Brannan Street)!
The signed, limited edition prints are available that night for one night only, and proceeds will benefit the San Francisco Bike Coalition. And there will be beer of the craft variety! Go support and party with your local artists, and score a gorgeous poster (or several) for your walls!
(Full disclosure: I have a print in ARTCRANK this year. It’s a dedication to awesome women who ride bikes, it involves wolves (of course), and I would be super stoked if you came by to see it!)
BFF.fm, the Mission’s own and city’s best underground radio station, just turned one! To celebrate, they’re throwing a big free birthday party at the Chapel tomorrow night, complete with music, DJ sets, tote bags full of party favors, and lots of cake — apparently of both slice and cup varieties! Musical guests include Happy Fangs, Nanosaur, Night Genes, and BFF.fm founder DJ Cosmic Amanda herself. And did I mention that it’s FREE?
Here are some cool facts about BFF.fm and Mission Mission:
BFF.fm was named by Allan, our very own editor!
BFF.fm is located in the Secret Alley, the most magical space in the city, partially built by Ariel!
According to Capp Street Crap, the iconic porn shop is revamping for a less seedy look, apparently taking design cues from Good Vibrations:
The decades-old shop near 17th and Mission streets is also being renamed Mission Secrets, all part of an effort, according to manager James Aragon, to attract more female clientele. This week, the store’s previously blue exterior was being painted beige, the interior had been lightened up, and a worker had taken down its trademark “Adult Superstore” sign. Those giant, suggestive and utterly ridiculous pictures of a man and woman that used to flank the front door, had also been covered up.
Aragon said the remodel is not to draw in more of the Mission’s moneyed residents, just to make the store more inviting to passersby.
“You have your good and bad,” he said, adding that more police presence seems to have brought more weekend foot traffic to his stretch of Mission Street. “During the weekends you have a lot of people, a lot of women walking around.”
According to Aragon, the store has begun carrying hosiery, more sex toys geared to women, and will soon have a display in the front window with a mannequin modeling the lingerie it has begun selling. On Friday, the area behind the cashier had been wallpapered and two fake orchids hung on shelves on either side of an ornate mirror. With upgrades, however, comes higher costs. Aragon said the store’s viewing booths will go from $5 to $10 and there will be a $15 all-day pass.
Boy, I’m gonna miss seeing that iconic storefront and signage from the Secret Alley. Read on for more photos and a quote about the “riff raff” in the neighborhood.
Mission Mission 