Mission Street, a commercial strip occupied by SRO homeless residents, tourists and other pedestrians during the day, gives way at night to the party crowd. In a four-block stretch at 11:20 p.m. on Saturday the flow of scenes became increasingly surreal.
At 21st and Mission in front of the Vanguard Properties, police were looking into what one officer called an incident of “road rage.” Two cars had collided, but no one was talking.
Just south at 22nd Street, a party blared above Skechers. It was hard not to wonder if it was overcrowded, if there were sprinklers, if it was a legal space.
And up the street, two young residents from a nearby hotel, took care of getting rid of a mattress.
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.
Hello, before writing something that challenges the legitimacy of a party, maybe you should used your journalistic skills to write a more informed article. Yes the party was fireproof and completely legal. Writing a more informed article would be beneficial for all, instead of playing off the fears from an atrocious tragedy.
The space above Skechers is the current headquarters of Abada – the community cultural organization specializing in training children in Capoeira. http://abada.org/ It is not at all comparable to a make-shift, unsafe warehouse space. It has been a dance space for decades. I recall in the 1970s that Carlos Carvajal used this as his Dance Spectrum ballet studio. Various Brazilian contingents use the space to rehearse for Carnaval. I’ve attended dance classes there. It’s quite lovely and well-maintained.
I once saw a street mattress on Lexington with graffiti that said, “people fell in love on me, and now you throw me away.” Mattress could tell a lot of stories if they could talk.
High numbers of mattress’s on the street are a sign of turmoil. When people are being evicted, or move out of their apartment quickly, they throw the mattress away on the street. When they are getting a new mattress, Sleep Train, Mattress Discounters, or Macy’s takes away the old mattress. When you see a mattress on the street, its usually a sign of someone’s life being disrupted.
The city keeps track of the locations of the mattresses that are thrown away on the street. Here’s an animation of what that looks like.
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Hello, before writing something that challenges the legitimacy of a party, maybe you should used your journalistic skills to write a more informed article. Yes the party was fireproof and completely legal. Writing a more informed article would be beneficial for all, instead of playing off the fears from an atrocious tragedy.
The space above Skechers is the current headquarters of Abada – the community cultural organization specializing in training children in Capoeira. http://abada.org/ It is not at all comparable to a make-shift, unsafe warehouse space. It has been a dance space for decades. I recall in the 1970s that Carlos Carvajal used this as his Dance Spectrum ballet studio. Various Brazilian contingents use the space to rehearse for Carnaval. I’ve attended dance classes there. It’s quite lovely and well-maintained.
I once saw a street mattress on Lexington with graffiti that said, “people fell in love on me, and now you throw me away.” Mattress could tell a lot of stories if they could talk.
High numbers of mattress’s on the street are a sign of turmoil. When people are being evicted, or move out of their apartment quickly, they throw the mattress away on the street. When they are getting a new mattress, Sleep Train, Mattress Discounters, or Macy’s takes away the old mattress. When you see a mattress on the street, its usually a sign of someone’s life being disrupted.
The city keeps track of the locations of the mattresses that are thrown away on the street. Here’s an animation of what that looks like.
https://gregorydillon.carto.com/viz/b554f95e-30e0-11e5-86e2-0e018d66dc29/public_map