At the very beginning, a quick reminder for all the literature junkies in the city: Lit Crawl, San Francisco’s biggest literature night is taking place this Saturday from 5 to 9 p.m.
Dozens of authors, poets, and readings will pop up at 30 events across 12 different bars, bookstores and venues. If you can’t make it tomorrow night, you can get a sense of it on this page. Mission Local will be reporting live from it all. For more information and the full schedule, go here.
Congrats to Pop’s Bar!
Pop’s Bar at 2800 24th St., a popular community meeting spot and “watering hole” for the neighborhood, was recently named a Legacy Business by San Francisco.
Here’s how the bar describes its place in the community: “Pop’s Bar is a gathering place for a vibrant and colorful blue-collar neighborhood. We open at 6 a.m. every morning for graveyard shift workers just getting off work. Pop’s Bar is the living room for the 24th Street corridor.”
Asiento is back
The familiar Asiento sign is back up in the window of 2730 21st St.
The 11-year-old Asiento made its return recently, after a five-month stint of being just another bar, Madam Racecar. The return was accompanied by a personnel change: Former Asiento manager Sven Forner is no longer part of the management team, according to owner Debi Cohn. To read more about Cohn, Forner, Asiento and Madam Racecar, go here.
Mosaic wall created by elementary school kids
A 800-square-foot mosaic wall will be unveiled at Sanchez Elementary on Oct. 26 at 9 a.m. The mosaic wall, titled “Together We Rise,” was completed with the cooperation of 300 students and parents of the school in honor of Latin Heritage Month. Creators picked symbols representing various cultures, the community and peace to represent perseverance, creativity and the power that art can have on students.
The wall can be found on the exterior of the school facing the playground.
A event designed for youth
The Power Youth Movement is taking place this Saturday at Longfellow Elementary School. As a conference for youth leaders and organized by youth leaders, the event is free and there will be food, workshop sessions, a DJ, raffles, local vendors, performers and a photo booth. All registered participants will be offered a t-shirt and a swag bag full of book, supplies and other surprises.
The event is expected to last from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 755 Morse St. More information can be found here.
Mission Lotería 16th Street expansion
This Saturday, Mission Lotería is hosting a celebration of several new game pieces created by American Indian artists at Panchita’s Pupuseria. The new 16th Street game pieces feature icons by American Indian artists, paying homage to American Indian history in California. Among the new icons are La Matriarca (The Matriarch), La Rueda de Medicina (The Medicine Wheel), Culturas Natives de California (Native Cultures of California), and La Salvia (sage). Stop by Panchita’s Pupuseria from 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturday to participate in Mission Lotería and see the new game pieces.
For more information, please click here.
Arts
Exhibition: ‘A Tree is a Tree‘
The David Ireland House is featuring a solo exhibition by San Francisco-based conceptual artist Michael Zheng from Oct. 22 to Nov. 19. The exhibit title, “A Tree is a Tree,” is a Buddhist aphorism that means the works on view, all of which place emphasis on “seeing” and “noticing.”
The exhibition is available to the public between noon and 5 p.m. on Saturdays only. Click here to reserve tickets.
Ray Balberan film screening at Brava Theater
Longtime Mission activist and filmmaker Ray Balberan has made waves in the Mission over the decades as a community activist, nonprofit case manager, and co-founder of the Mission Media Archive. Now, Balberan’s creative work takes center stage at the Brava Theater Center’s “Mission Love: Celebrating the Films of Ray Balberan and Mission Mediarts” event on Oct. 22.
The Mission Mediarts collective was founded in 1971 by Ray Rivera, a community worker at R.A.P., focusing on “Chicano Power via media.” At a time when Latinx voices were absent in television and film, the working-class collective of predominantly Latino, Black, and Pacific Islander artists produced several programs chronicling daily life in the Mission, including organizing for farmworkers’ and tenants’ rights, the mural arts movement, and lowrider culture.
The screenings will include three of Balberan’s 16mm films from the 1970s, including documentary footage of a 1973 Mission Coalition Organization demonstration protesting the cancellation of a social-welfare program, a surrealist Vietnam-era protest film interweaving battlefield reenactments with local Mission protests against police brutality, and a cinema verité portrait of Balberan’s own Mission District family, originally commissioned and broadcast nationally as part of a series on “Love” by PBS.
Click here for more information.
Artist talk
Ruth’s Table is holding an in-gallery discussion next Thursday for its current exhibition Agents of Change: Margaret Fabrizio and Kawandis. The exhibition features a collection of quilt and fiber artist Margaret Fabrizio’s work, which are mostly inspired by the Kawandi style of quilting, a technique that Fabrizio learned during her time in India.
The event takes place on Oct. 27 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. More information, click here.