Mission. Sunshine. SF's Best Neighborhood in Two or More Parts.........

You need color, don't you?

Sunshine?

Something

different?

I said "sunny",  right?

You are in the Mission, San Francisco.

A place very different from anywhere you have been before.

(That is, unless, you caught my previous Mission posts.)   Full of personality.

Even if we're just talking about bookstores.......

History.

Tour books will always describe a place as "vibrant".  Which always seems to end up being a sort of gloss, or a sheen that hangs over a neighborhood that is otherwise fairly ordinary.

The Mission by contrast, VIBRATES.

It bursts with energy and attitude.

color, variety, individuality.

Diversity.  It's a cultural mashup that individualists and adventurers would have to ADORE.

Where else can you visit a divey local joint called "WE BE SUSHI"?  (and would you dare eat sushi there?)

There are plenty of bicycle shops in the Mission and none of the bikes in them seem to be boring, or average.

There seem to be plenty of unusual things hanging from the ceiling in the Mission.  Looking UP isn't always something you do indoors, is it?  It gives you a bit of an Alice Through the Looking Glass sensation.

There is a strong sense of group identity.  Unusual really, in the days we now occupy.

But an agreement not on being uniform or conforming to an outer world's standards, rather, an agreement on things having to be.....

various.  and OTHER.

There is room for giant rodents.  And cuckoo clock collections.  The Mission makes you realize that maybe YOU have always wanted something like these lot sharing YOUR personal spaces.

Mission Picnic says a little something about the lightness of living in this part of San Francisco in this time.

And the lightheartedness that persists in the Mission.

Despite creeping change.

Could gentrification actually succeed in de-personalizing and sterilizing

This most personal of public spaces?????  I DO HOPE NOT.

We need places like the Mission.  Like we need lungs to breath and eyes to see.

We all need a space somewhere in the world to be different.   And together.

(IMHO)