I saw this and did a double-take - I live in the neighborhood and am fortunate enough to be a part of this community. Patty, Tyler, and Luke have done a tremendous job of creating a communal bond that makes everyone feel valued & welcome.
I now know 50+ people who live within ~2 blocks from me, who've gone from "random strangers" to "friendly neighbors" that I run into semi-randomly.
Its roughly a 2x2 block area of The Mission (not a hard boundary to participating, but almost everyone lives in it). I won't get more specific than that in case the author doesn't feel comfortable since it wasn't mentioned in her post.
Cool! I live close to Valencia/17th. Was just wondering if it was somewhere in my area: the houses looked Missiony but I couldn’t immediately place them.
That shop is great! I've found a variety of treasures there over the last few years, including a mint-condition red leather recliner for $150 and a 60's era Soviet toy house. My favorite was a beautifully executed, life-sized oil painting of a nude; it started at $1200 and went down to $200 over the course of a few weeks, at which point I just had to buy it despite not really having the wall space to hang it up. I wanted to find out more about the subject, so I Googled the artist's signature, found the painting on his website, and reached out to chat. Turns out the painting had been stolen from his friend's house decades ago and he'd been looking for it ever since! We met up after he told me his story and I "sold" the painting back to him for the listing price; he left me a very generous tip and an art book. (See "The Platonic Friend" at https://www.kevinkearney.org/portfolio/figures.)
I now know 50+ people who live within ~2 blocks from me, who've gone from "random strangers" to "friendly neighbors" that I run into semi-randomly.