Little Paper Planes, among the most “Instagrammable” boutiques on Valencia Street, will be closed by July after five years on the corridor and more than a decade online. “I can’t do it any longer,” said Kelly Jones, the store’s owner. Sales have declined in the last two years, and Jones said she is ready to turn the page. “San Francisco...
A food truck serving the Filipino version of tacos, burritos and fries smothered in nacho-like toppings will return to the corner of 18th and Valencia. Señor Sisig is not, concluded Supervisor Hillary Ronen, “an existential threat to the adjacent restaurants.” In a unanimous vote on Tuesday, city supervisors reversed a ruling by the San Francisco Planning Commission to ban food...
Manny Yekutiel has done a lot of politics in his 28 years. He’s raised funds for the American Civil Liberties Union, briefed former President Barack Obama as a White House intern, and now works on Mark Leno’s mayoral campaign. But not until three weeks ago, when he signed the lease on 3092 16th Street — formerly V16 Sushi, on the...
Dryer Fire on Valencia St. A one-alarm fire caused by a couple of dryers at a laundromat near 19th and Valencia streets sent black smoke billowing onto the corridor at around 10:10 a.m. Friday. The fire was under control within five minutes, according to Acting Battalion Chief Mike Mullin, who was standing in front of the laundromat at 789 Valencia...
Young entrepreneurs, beware: by June, Valencia Street will be getting a permanent lemonade stand near the corner of 20th Street. Its name? Gourmonade. And it will serve the “the best, freshest, realest lemonade possible,” says Gourmande owner and founder, Vicktor Stevenson, who, in a past life, did “all things hair.” “I want people to taste lemon when they try my...
Update (12:10 p.m.): Lyft confirmed Friday morning that the geofenced area does indeed span more than one block on Valencia, from 16th to 19th. Lyft rolled out a pilot program Thursday to move a certain percentage of its pickups on Valencia Street between 16th and 17th streets to a side street, Lyft spokesperson Chelsea Harrison confirmed Thursday in an email. The move,...
Signs have gone up in the Mission urging patrons to boycott the Phoenix Irish Pub on Valencia Street to protest a decision by its owner to fire seven female employees. The signs read: “Shitty business practices!! The owner fired entire female bar staff (not male staff) without any warning or reason and lied about closing the bar, only to reopen...
The three-month-old shop DCopper, at 1017 Valencia St., has its roots in Santa Clara del Cobre, in Michoacán Mexico. It’s there, said DCopper’s owner, Andrea Vargas, that her grandmother, Felicitas Ornelas de Paz, snuck into the forge at a time when only men shaped copper. It would not be the first time that Ornelas de Paz ignored the rules. In...
Last Thursday, Grand Coffee owner Nabeel Silmi purchased an order of 60 pounds of roasted coffee from Four Barrel. A day later, the Chronicle reported that Four Barrel’s owner, Jeremy Tooker, was being accused of sexual harassment by eight women in a lawsuit filed the same day. Now, after seven years of doing business with the coffee roaster, Silmi says...
The Farina restaurant group seems to have collapsed. The second of two restaurants in the company has been evicted. No pizzas appear to have been served at Farina Pizza on Valencia and 18th streets in recent weeks, and potential diners are met with conflicting messages in the window. One, a chalkboard sign, announces the restaurant is “now hiring” and another,...
Prefer to listen? It’s on our podcast — or right here. MAPP is this weekend! The Mission Arts and Performance Project, a monthly neighborhood-spanning event presenting live performances and visual art across media and venues, takes place Saturday, Dec. 2. Events this time include laughter yoga, anticapitalist comedy satire, Scottish soliloquy and more, across seven different venues . You can...
When Rami Barqawi opened his first Healthy Spirits store in the Castro in 1998, he never thought it would transform into a “destination” for high-end spirits. Back then, Healthy Spirits was just a name, and the items on the shelves were pure convenience-store stock. “It was butter and tampons and toilet paper,” he said. But, several years after opening, Barqawi’s...
Shift astounds city supervisor: “They don’t know what the fuck is going on with their buses.” In August, Mission Local broke the story that Muni’s New Flyer diesel-electric hybrid buses, which come with a nearly $750,000-a-pop price tag justified by their environmental bona fides, did not have a rudimentary pollution control device installed on them. These buses, Muni yard workers...
San Francisco District 9 supervisor Hillary Ronen sent a letter to ride-hailing giants Uber and Lyft Tuesday, asking them to use geofencing technology to find safe places for pick-ups and drop-offs — and to test such a system on Valencia Street, notorious for ride-share cars blocking the bike lanes. “At this point, Valencia is completely out of control with bikes,...
When Alan Beatts announced in early 2015 that he would close his science fiction, mystery, and horror bookstore Borderlands, his customers did something extraordinary: They refused to let it happen. At a meeting that packed the Borderlands Cafe next door to the bookstore, they mourned the loss – and then made suggestions ranging from the tame to the bizarre to...
