Some 70 tech companies are currently registered in the Mission District and increasingly, all are facing the same challenges that residents and other businesses have long blamed on tech – high rents and increasing wealth inequality. “Rent and staff cost a lot more in San Francisco than they do anywhere else,” said Zach Berke of Exygy, a digital services agency focused...
Listen Local is Mission Local in audio form. We record live on a biweekly webcast at BFF.fm every other Thursday morning from 9:30 to 10:00. This week we talked with muralist Sirron Norris, who has a number of projects around the Mission District, about making murals now, and what it’s been like in the past. Norris is also the lead...
San Francisco Planning Commissioners on Thursday approved a land use and policy plan designed to mitigate the effects of gentrification and displacement in the Mission District. The seven commissioners also agreed to a nine-month extension on 14-month-old restrictions that require some projects to undergo more stringent review. The policy plan, called the Mission Action Plan 2020, is the product of...
The San Francisco Planning Commission voted unanimously on Thursday to move forward legislation that would regulate new businesses opening along the Mission’s 24th Street corridor. Already distinguished by the city as a Latino Cultural District in 2014, the five-block section of 24th Street running from Mission Street to Potrero Avenue and some of the surrounding area would be recognized as...
Valencia Street’s steady evolution into an increasingly upscale commercial corridor is claiming yet another local casualty as the two-decade old vintage and costume shop Retro Fit informed Mission Local of its exit. A bid on the shop’s space and a lease-less existence have made its continued survival on the corridor impossible, said owner Steven LeMay, adding that Retro Fit will be...
After years of collaborative planning effort, more than a dozen nonprofits and city organizations have revealed their plan to spare the Mission’s diversity and cultural richness from gentrification. That plan, known as Mission Action Plan 2020, is now available for review and comment and will be considered by the Planning Commission on Thursday, March 2. The year 2020 refers to...
Activists who have long tried to fight gentrification by opposing market-rate development and upscale businesses are now targeting new restaurants on Mission Street. The latest focus is a tea restaurant planned for the site of the former Sapphire Photo store at 2761 Mission St. between 23rd and 24th streets. A frequent opponent of new developments in the Mission has filed a...
Merchants along the 24th Street corridor where a new proposal seeks to protect them feel the city’s affordability crisis just as strongly as tenants fearing displacement, but their views on how to remedy it are as varied as their wares. District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen’s first proposed legislation offered a trio of land-use based protections for businesses on 24th Street...
You knew the city was changing – now here are some number that illustrate how. The population turnover citywide has resulted in huge shifts. More white, Latino and Asian people and fewer black people live in the city as a whole (though the Mission’s Latino population specifically has dropped), but more significantly, the mean income jumped by about 13 percent,...
“Frak,” the hip hop moniker of Alex Fraknoi, grew up in the Mission and has seen it change – particularly when he returns on visits from Southern California, where he’s studying writing and media studies. That change inspired a rap song and music video set in the Mission, in which Frak walks the neighborhood hidden behind a fixed plastic emoji...
Progressive politicos, activists, and other movie-goers descended on the Roxie Theater on Friday night for what has become a San Francisco tradition in recent years: lamenting tech’s influence on the city, particularly its financial takeover of local politics. Supervisors David Campos and Aaron Peskin, State Senator Mark Leno, author and journalist David Talbot, and various aides, journalists, and local activists...
Local band Soltron will play at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts this Friday to mark the release of its self-titled album celebrating the Mission District’s culture and exploring themes of gentrification and displacement. Soltron began as a trio of drummers in 2014 after percussionist Anthony Sierra went to Cuba, where his father is from, to study the batá,...
It is impossible to quantify the exchanges and relationships that have formed in the spaces that artist Todd Brown has created and curated in the Mission for nearly two decades. He’s been heavily involved in the Mission Arts & Performance Project, known as MAPP, which started in 2003 when Brown saw a need to connect local artists living within blocks from...
In a collaboration with local residents and KQED, Detour, a startup offering audio walking tours of 11 San Francisco neighborhoods launched its Mission District tour yesterday. The Mission’s tour offers insight into the lives of six locals and newcomers who share a love for the neighborhood but grapple with the question of belonging. The city package sells for $24.99, and...
For the second time in less than two weeks, a tagger has scrawled over a mural of ten stenciled sea turtles on the wall of a Pacific Gas & Electric substation at the corner of 19th and San Carlos streets – the mural was first defaced with the words “Latino Art Only.” Six of the turtles were slashed with paint...
