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You’ve got to hand it to Vera Cort who gave Southern Exposure a great lease on the corner space in 2009 that began the refurbishing of a lot of old and empty buildings.
The longtime business there, Atlas Cafe, across the street from Southern Exposure, has not lost out. It remains packed despite the new competition from Sightglass Coffee, the Salumeria and Central Kitchen.
I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still here.
As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.
As founder and an editor at ML, I've been trying to figure out how to make my interest in local news sustainable. If Mission Local is a model, the answer might be that you - the readers - reward steady and smart content. As a thank you for that support we work every day to make our content even better.
More by Lydia Chávez3 Comments
Atlas is cool…an old standby, which offers wifi, unlike sightglass (boo.)
As for SoEx, their art pgrms totally suck at the new location. I’m so tired of rehashed and forced 3rd rate post modern videos and installations! FFS give it a rest. At their old location near 17th street the art programming was much better.
Also, La Raza on 24th street, quality of art pgrms went downhill there too. Same forced and heavy handed post modern crap; too much.
Love the Atlas Cafe. It would be great if ML could do a story on them. They’ve been a great stable in the area, with great food, great coffee, great patio and super non-pretentious vibe.
staple in the area…sorry.