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On May 16, The Bold Italic, Asiento, and Revolights paired for an amazing evening in the MishiPot microhood (aka Mission Gulch, aka the sweet spot between the Mission and Potrero Hill, from Mariposa to 21st Street between Harrison and Hampshire). There was little sun but lots of fun; tons of people came out to the event to celebrate an up and coming neighborhood that has a lot to offer. 

NoisePop hosted an open house at its headquarters with beer, music, and deals on amazing music-related merchandise. Then right around the corner at Blowfish Sushi, NoisePop and The Bay Bridged hosted DJs to celebrate the upcoming Phono del Sol party on July 13. 

If guests were still hungry after filling up on sushi, they could head over to the American Grilled Cheese Kitchen for special grilled cheese sliders and a pint for just $10. 

Inner Mission served complimentary libations from SPICED, as well as a DJ and a showcase of Android Jones' curated art. The NWBLK offered snacks and CCA's Thesis Art show. Heath Ceramics hosted a mini trunk show featuring artist Julia Turner and Mat Dick. 

When it was time for dessert, Charles' Chocolates offered samples and the Coffee Bar hosted a Home Frys game night. Adventurous Sports had free snowboard, ski, and surf lessons on an amazing outdoor sports simulator, and for those looking to relax, In-Symmetry provided free chair massages. 

Asiento offered MishiPot guests $1 off beer, wine, and specialty cocktails, and neighbors KQED had a table with some very cool swag, as well as the Mishipot Passport and postcards. 

Alite hosted a party with all of its awesome camping and outdoor products on display; the crew also provided snacks and refreshments. 

Outside of Alite people played epic games of cornhole. 

Our friends at Mosey created a guide to the Microhood so people could navigate the fun. Guests could fill out one of Mosey's San Francisco madlibs that the company would then send out for them, stamps and all. 

Photo by Talia Pines.

Photo by Talia Pines.

All other photos by Taylor Reid. 

Photo by Borja Laullon

Ever since I graduated from college I've held down a series of internships, none of which have actually progressed into a real life job. It's been pretty frustrating, and while I know that I should be grateful that I have a job at all (two, actually) I've considered more than once leaving the Bay Area and trying my prospects somewhere else. 

So imagine my surprise when in a recent list released by Forbes, San Francisco was named the best city to get a job in 2013.

Forbes took into account short, medium, and long-term employment performance for this list, as well as both growth and momentum (determining whether growth is slowing or accelerating). The publication also noted that areas that have made significant comebacks from dire setbacks often rank well. 

Nowhere is this last point more the case than in the Bay Area, where over the last year, employment in San Francisco expanded a remarkable 4.1%, and is up 3.3% since 2008. Most of these new jobs have been in America's two big boom sectors: tech and energy. 

"A decade ago, the San Francisco area was reeling from the collapse of the last dot-com bubble; the damage was so deep that today it has only 0.6% more jobs than in 2001. Its sharp recent growth is primarily in the information sector, which has expanded a torrid 21.3% since 2009." 

All this information may be true, but I don't see it played out in my daily life among my friends – not a single one of us majored in computer science. In fact, most of my best friends moved to Washington DC straight out of college, where better jobs were seemingly waiting for them with open arms. Of those who did stay in the Bay, quite a few of them still live with their parents or they live in the East Bay, because whatever job they have managed to land in the city still doesn't pay for rent and college loans. 

Perhaps 2013 will be my year and some tech company will take pity on my degrees in English and history, but until that day, I remain skeptical that this really is the best place for starting a career that doesn't have to do with technology or energy. 

Image: queenbeeamy

Trying on clothes sucks, especially if you aren't a twig. I cannot tell you how many times I have plucked an adorable blouse off the racks of a popular store in a size large and been unable to button it over my moderately sized chest. The problem is not the size of my body, it's the construction of the garment. This is an issue I've dealt with my entire life, and I am certainly not the only one.  

In every season of Project Runway there is always one designer who throws a shit fit when the plus-size challenge comes around, which I can only imagine is a feeling shared throughout the industry. The number of Americans categorized as obese is growing, and this is an issue that needs to be addressed, however the clothing industry and its refusal to accept that most women aren't runway models also needs attention. 

Refinery29 posted that when Cornell Apparel Design sophomores Brandon Wen and Laura Zwanziger began working on their final class presentation, they made an interesting discovery regarding clothing for larger ladies. They found that when designing for plus-size women, the industry typically creates a prototype and then increases the garment to scale, making for ill fitting clothing that's big in all the wrong places. Wen and Zwanziger realized that even if they wanted to create well designed women's lines in all sizes, they were limited in their resources. They also found that plus-sized mannequins representing real women don't exist, so the students decided to create their own. 

Food porn from The Edible Selby by Todd Selby, making the rest of us pie-makers look bad

Last summer, I went to a good friend’s baby shower and, keeping in line with my greatest fears at these sorts of events (where the hostess knows the hodgepodge of bodies in the room but no one knows each other), I was forced to make small talk with a new person. When you don’t know people, there are very few topics of universal conversation. One of them is food. Because I had brought a homemade peach pie, I found myself cornered into a nauseating dialogue about peaches. The fact that I made the dough and filling from scratch should have been enough. We should have been able to say “how nice” and move on. But I found myself having to discuss the attributes of varieties of stone fruit with this girl, who seemed like kind of a food jerk. You just haven’t lived until you’ve had this variety dripping out of your mouth and warmed by the heat of the sun straight off the tree. I don’t know how anyone could just eat a regular peach. I was clearly not really living, but instead going to work everyday rather than hanging out in peach farms. I swallowed my pride at my beautiful rustic crust and also the dirty, secret truth that my peaches were domestic. Seriously, not only did I not pick them myself, I couldn’t afford to buy organic, and I would have died rather than tell this so-San Francisco of eaters, lest I be shunned and stoned to death by the rest of the taste-buds in the room.

Boring small talk about fruit at a party aside, I realized this whole SF foodie thing was getting out of control when I read an art interview where the artist was asked what he did besides make art. He responded that at the top of his list was “pruning his Meyer lemon tree.” Really? I know Meyers are supposed to be more “lemony,” but do you really need to name-drop your fruit tree? Have we gone so far in our obsession with food that we have replaced clothing labels with food varieties, to be bragged about in totally unrelated contexts? Isn’t boasting about your brand of fruit in an art interview the same as someone asking the question, “How do you get to work in the morning?” and me answering “I put on my Dior jeans one leg at a time before I get in the car.”?

Want to read the rest of why you are a huge foodie jerk by Serena Cole? Check it out on the KQED POP Blog. 

The most ridiculous, scandalous, and musical things happening in the crazy world of San Francisco tech.