In what could be seen as the continued Starbucks-ification of Valencia Street, brick-and-mortar coffee purveyors Ritual Coffee Roasters recently pulled the work of photographer Varese Layzer. It was considered "too serious" for the cafe's walls. While neither visually offensive nor too harrowing at first glance, the exhibit centered around the death of a the artist's mother. Upon reading the artist's statement after the show went live, Ritual owner Eileen Hassi later stripped the walls of Layzer's art and sent her a gracious (albeit somewhat perplexing) letter of explanation, which was then posted to Layzer's Flickr account. Here's what the letter said: more ›

This is all kinds of awesome. Seriously. And we hope Ritual Roasters doesn't 409 this choice bit of vandalism. more ›

Visitors to all the standalone Starbucks across the country yesterday evening couldn't get their buzz on. Why? Because of the temporary national shutdown. Starbucks workers, like these on busy Masonic (where there will be a rally to make that avenue safer at 11:00AM this morning by the way), learned how to do things the Starbuckian way last night. more ›

All together now: We declare our right on this earth to park our cars within 50 feet of our favorite coffee shops, to be drivers, to be respected as drivers, on this earth, in the Mission, where we intend to find parking wherever we can by any means necessary. more ›

The fire department cordoned off Valencia between 22nd and 23rd to put out a fire. Bikes could still go through. Gawkers were in luck: they could have some of the best coffee in SF right across the street at Ritual Roasters while watching the SFFD get at it. more ›

Mission hipster haven, Ritual Roasters, is hosting a stellar art event organized by curator/painter/illustrator extraordinaire, Sacha Eckes. The show runs through December 2nd and features artists Timothy Buckwalter, Bill Dunlap, Sacha Eckes, Nancy Mizuno Elliott, Christopher Jernberg, Alexis Mackenzie, Paul Madonna (whom we interviewed in May), Mike Monteiro, Fred Rinne, Brion Nudah Rosch & Ifton Schlinger and Micke Tong. more ›

Step right up! Step right up! The Gavin Newsom San Francisco carnival is coming to town! SEE .... the horrors that abound in the San Francisco Housing Authority! GAWK..... at the desperate lives of people trying to get by in the sub-standard apartment units provided by the city! GASP..... at the pitiful amounts of money residents try to live on! And then.... open your wallets! Won't you help.... for the children? more ›

Ritual Coffee Roasters' two locations are only about three miles apart. Not so bad on a bike, right? Well, what if you're biking with 130 pounds of coffee? Yeah, a little tougher. This Saturday, popular cafe Ritual Roasters, in conjunction with Bikes to Rwanda, is having a wacky, multi-tiered charity event that involves bike-race betting, film-watching, a raffle, and the consumption of both of our favorite beverages: booze and coffee. more ›

PG&E set up what they call a "sustainable pop-up cafe" in the Tenderloin last week; but it closed after a single day, so it doesn't sound very sustainable to us. It was part of PG&E's sponsorship of Hood Games 6, a skating/art fest, and featured furniture made out of debris reclaimed from the dump; coffee was supplied by Ritual Roasters; and patrons got green mugs from which to sip. And it was all offered up for free, which is probably why it couldn't be sustained for more than a few hours. (More pix from their PR lady are posted on our Flickr account.) more ›

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Droll NPR commentator (who was previously fired for cursing) Sandra Tsing Loh brings her one-woman show, "Mother On Fire," to the Women's Building tonight! For a 9 night run! more ›

Every once in awhile, SFist likes to get out of our pajamas and take the SFist show on the road. So we pick up our trusty laptop and head on out to go work at a coffee shop. There's one we especially like to go to-- it's small, extremely cute and cozy, and has plenty of outlets for everyone to plug in. There's only one problem, though, and that even at like two in the afternoon, they're usually too full for us to get a table. And so we go to another place only to discover that they too are completely full. It's two in the afternoon, doesn't anybody have jobs? more ›

Quick -- which one of those pictures above is of Valencia Street in SF and which is of Williamsburg in Brooklyn? more ›

In part one of our spotlight on Ritual Roasters, we told you the backstory behind one the the Mission's most popular new cafes. We did, however, save one important component of that story for this follow-up: the origin of the name. Sure, the name "Ritual Roasters," resonates, has nice alliteration, and may seem like a no-brainer. For Eileen Hassi and Jeremy Tooker, though, the process was agonizing. more ›

SFist Karen catches some Andy Goldsworthy-esque art on the beach. more ›

"Our friends pitied us when they saw this place," says Eileen Hassi, co-proprietor of red-hot Mission District cafe Ritual Roasters. "They told us we were doing everything wrong." Jeremy Tooker, her co-proprietor, agreed. "We had too much space, they said," he says. "We'd never fill the tables. The streets around here were dead before 10 a.m." What may have seemed a series of missteps and misadventures to Hassi and Tooker's peers turned out to be serendipity -- the stuff that goes into the best of origin stories. Stuffed into the back office, under the eyes of a giant millipede for whom the gang was pet sitting, the Eileen and Jeremy talked to SFist about how and why they got their start, what it's like to run a small business in one of San Francisco's hippest 'hoods, some of the keys to their recent success, and what's next to come. more ›

Food & Wine has a pretty interesting take on what's good in coffee these days -- The Obsessive's Guide to Coffee.". The magazine has some purdy pictures, but you can get it all, plus more, here on the internets. We really enjoyed it, but the title of the article may be a bit off. Obsessive? Ummm, not really. No, we don't think so. Enthusiast, perhaps, would have been a better choice. An obsessive would already be doing things like . . . more ›

Last week, we posted our 'Fistie awards for best coffee/cafe in town. A few of the people leaving comments mentioned Cafe Organica at 562 Central Ave. (at Grove) as a contender for the crown. We're pleased to say that had we visited Cafe Organica, which opened last May, just a couple weeks earlier, stalwarts Ritual Roasters and Blue Bottle would have had to share some of the limelight. This place is great. more ›