Making your world a little more paranoid, the reports that gang wars are back in the Mission. The (red-wearing) Norteno gang considers the South Mission their turf, while the upstart (blue-wearing) Sureno gang takes the North Mission starting at around 16th Street, with the DMZ at 22nd Street.

Apparently tensions are starting to run high. In the last month, there have been five potentially gang-related incidents -- a homeless man at 24th and Mission beaten with a baseball bat by five people wearing red, a 17 year old stabbed in the stomach at 25th and Alabama by a group of people flashing gang symbols and wearing red, kids in blue storming a 14 Mission bus at 18th and Mission and stabbing a kid wearing red, a kid shot outside SF General by a group of men wearing blue, and a man wearing red at 16th and Valencia shot in the arm. Rumors are also flying that the gangs are using the new BART extensions to recruit in South City, but the police believe that's a myth.

"If I walked through the Mission and I was a kid, I would wear all khaki," cautions one lieutenant in the SFPD Gang Task Force.

Examiner