Patronize Box Dog Bikes

With little money and even less knowledge, how you despise the thought of entering a bike shop to repair that rhythmic clunk emanating from the chunky tubes of your battered beater!

As you approach the front door, the sweat beads on your forehead, your breath quickens in your constricted chest (maybe you shouldn't have worn that harness today) and you want to dump the bike, run home and stuff your head under your pillow until the last rays of daylight have receded from between the cracks in the aluminum foil covering your bedroom window.

If only there were a bike shop where the repair people didn't look at you like an idiot when you thrust your two-wheeled friend into their arms, a tear of bafflement simultaneously dislodging from its glistening perch at the corner of your eye and then didn't go ahead and recommend a bunch of fixes that amount to more than the original price of said POS.

Here's your answer:


Though not entirely the idealized always-friendly-and-completely-free bike shop of your sweet vermouth-addled dreams, Box Dog Bikes comes pretty close.

• Box Dog is a worker-owned cooperative.
  
• There is a "community bench" that anyone with basic bike-repair knowledge can use sans charge.
  
• A 10% discount is given to members of the SF Bike Coalition.
  
• Free bike-repair classes are offered every few months.
  
• A couple file cabinets stand full of used components, organized by type.
  
• Most everyone there seems attuned to the needs of those not wanting to spend gobs of cash to fix every small thing on an older bike.

Fuck yes.


Box Dog Bikes is located on 14th, between Guerrero and Valencia. It is open Monday-Friday (closed Wednesday), 11-7; Saturday, 10-5; and Sunday, 12-5.

Get a latte at Ritual Coffee Roasters

Ok, I get that everyone and his similarly emaciated hipster brother has been to Ritual.

Fixie at your side, laptop slung over shoulder, and scarf tied just so, you've activated your irony beacon and homed in on the Valencia Street coffeehouse hanging the takeoff--see below--on the Soviet and Chinese flags out front.


Unfortunately you can no longer take chairs outside--evidently it impedes the strollers and wheelchairs of members of the bookends of the Mission social strata--so remind the nearest art student that he doesn't need four chairs to himself and grab a place at a table.

Their lattes are delicious (and well priced) and their hot chocolate above average. On information and belief, their normal coffee is also better than most, enough so that my friend with a whiskey-ravaged stomach--who probably should avoid coffee too--wants to get one every time he's in town on a weekend morning. I'm unsure about the rest of the drinks, but I'd be willing to bet they're also quite tasty.

Bottom line: the coffee is good enough to warrant both a special trip and the hassle of pulling on your leg warmers and pushing up your sleeves so your tattoos are in full view.

(Oh, the art up for sale is usually good too.)


Ritual Coffee Roasters is located on Valencia between 21st and 22nd. It is open Mon-Fri, 6AM-10PM; Sat, 7AM-10PM; and Sun, 7AM-9PM. There is another location, with much more restricted hours, in the Bayview at 1634 Jerrold, just west of 3rd Street.

Eat at Palace Steak House

While not quite as grand as the name suggests, Palace Steak House is nonetheless worth a stop on an "I'm out of here" tour of this city's notable culinary destinations.

Sure, Morton's it is not, but it's got a hell of a lot more character than the Sizzler's you grew up going to with your grandparents, your legs sticking to its vinyl booths and the odd garlic bread crumbs that dotted them uncomfortably embedding themselves into your sensitive adolescent flesh because of those stupid short shorts your mom used to make you wear all the time.

Now that you don't wear short shorts anymore, it's safe to again frequent inexpensive steakhouses with vinyl booths.

And in the case of the Palace, you get a great steak, iceberg lettuce salad, baked potato and garlic bread for about ten bucks ($10). Not fucking bad. (Whether you find added value in the odd, decades-old decor or the odd, decades-long owners is up to you.)

Bonus points if you realize after eating here that for years you'd been walking by the sun-bleached sign


in the parking lot of the gas station at 17th and South Van Ness under which the bums sleep without realizing that it was advertising the very-extant PALACE STEAK HOUSE.


Palace Steak House (also known, somewhat mysteriously, as Palace Family Steak House [not to be confused with the band of the same name]) is located at 3047 Mission, at Cesar Chavez and has been open since 1968. It does not serve Niman Ranch beef, you snob. Extra special bonus points if you take your boyfriend there for his birthday.

Visit your local branch library

Someone has to break the stranglehold of bored schoolchildren and senior citizens on public library usage. Luckily for the continent among us, the San Francisco Public Library makes it easy, with 26 branches spread throughout the city, most with free WiFi access and many open until 9PM a few nights a week.

Library cards are free for California residents and not only allow you to check out materials in person, but also give you access to a host of online resources. You can search the catalogue; place holds on materials and request delivery to your favored branch once they become available; renew stuff you've checked out; request from a 9-million-title, intra-California lending network any book that the SFPL may not have--all from home, in bed, wearing only the boxers you've had on for the last few days.

For the especially thrifty, the SFPL offers a way to skirt both a monthly Netflix bill and the $3 charge for a movie-plus-tiresome-interaction-with-the-congenitally-unfriendly-staff at Lost Weekend Video by allowing members to request and/or check out any title in its voluminous collection. For free.

For starters, I would recommend the Mission Branch Library. The reading room's ceiling alone is worth the trip. Founded in 1888, the Mission branch is the oldest in the city. The present, post-earthquake building, which opened in 1915, was funded by a grant from Andrew Carnegie and designed by G. Albert Lansburgh, who also designed the Warfield and the Golden Gate theaters in San Francisco, as well as the Orpheum, Wiltern and El Capitan theaters in LA.


The Mission Branch Library is located on the corner of Bartlett St. and 24th. It is open 7 days a week (!). Andrew Carnegie was the self-made steel magnate whose personal philanthropy was legendary--e.g., he funded the construction of over 3,000 libraries in 47 states. He was a staunch advocate of a "confiscatory" estate tax, writing in his essay "Wealth", "By taxing estates heavily at death the state marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire's unworthy life." Interestingly, he was not known for dealing with his workers in a particularly benevolent fashion.

Enjoy an ice cream cone from Mitchell's

Mitchell's ice cream is the perfect antidote for a postprandial and/or post-coital sweet tooth. Visit the shop at the edge of Noe Valley/the Mission/Bernal Heights, or look for the ice cream at restaurants around town.

Mitchell's has been open, in the same location and owned by the same family, since 1953.


It now offers everything from cones and cups to cakes and pies to sundaes, milkshakes and something called halo-halo (a traditional treat from the Philippines made out of "sweet beans and mongo beans, a blend of fruit, evaporated milk, shaved ice" and a scoop of ice cream).

Check out Mitchell's website for flavors, awards and more historical information. If you decide to visit, bring a book or someone to talk to/make out with, as you may have to wait in line.


Mitchell's Ice Cream is located on San Jose Ave. (Guerrero St.) at the corner of 29th. It is open 7 days a week, from 11AM to 11PM. Interestingly, Mitchell's does not distribute its ice cream outside of the Bay Area.

Get Mexican and beers and eat in Dolores Park

Since prehistoric times, man has found comfort and clarity in eating outside. Only recently has he taken to eating microwaved frozen science projects while seated in overstuffed reclining chairs and facing flat panels frenetically churning with consumerist imagery. The delivery man and the drive-thru are the mallet and stake piercing the now-clogged heart of America's healthy, fresh-air digestion.

All of which bring us back to grabbing a burrito, a tall boy of Tecate and taking them to the gentle green slopes of Dolores Park. Find an unpeopled bit of grass and call up your friends to join you. Bring a book or a frisbee or that little one-hitter you bought from your sister's stoner girlfriend when you visited her at Smith while still in high school. Don't forget a jacket though, as this is San Francisco, Land Devoid of Warm Nights.

Your hunter-gather forebears would be appalled if you moved to Brooklyn without having spent an evening eating on the grass in the sunny Mission. Tsk tsk.


Dolores Park is bounded by 18th and 20th north and south, and by Dolores and Church on the east and west. It is usually quite crowded on a nice day or evening, but there's always room for one more. Additional optional accessories depend on the part of the park in which you choose to sit: fixie and ironic smirk (corner of Dolores and 18th), attention-starved dog and/or soccer ball (the dusty plateau behind the basketball courts), a young child (the playground directly in the center), a Speedo, tanning oil and mirrored Prada sun glasses (the upper corner at 20th and Church).

Check out the murals in Balmy Alley

One of the great things about living in the Mission is the number and quality of the murals that you stumble by in the midst of your daily routine. Depending on where you live, that might happen while biking past the Women's Building to Dolores Park, scavenging for clean needles in Clarion Alley or vomiting on the ground on Clinton Park after an afternoon-that-turned-into-night at Zeitgeist. Worth a special trip, though, is Balmy Alley.

Make it an afternoon, perhaps. Get huevos rancheros or tacos at Taqueria Vallarta--located right at the 24th-Street mouth of Balmy--grab a tall boy or two from the corner store across the street and then head into the alley. You will find a block-long stretch of garages and the backs of houses painted in all manner of styles by a number of different artists. (If you're really good, you'll probably recognize the work of a few artists who have done other murals around town.) And once you pop out at 25th, make sure to keep an eye out for another Mission icon: the passed-out drunkard pissing himself in Garfield Square.


Balmy Alley connects 24th and 25th Streets and is between Treat and Harrison. The Women's Building fronts 18th Street between Valencia and Guerrero. Clarion Alley connects Valencia and Mission, between 17th and 18th. Clinton Park is a tiny street off Valencia that smells like hell. If you really dig murals and want the whole shebang, check out the walking tour offered every Saturday morning by the community arts organization Precita Eyes.