Last night in the Mission, six contestants hopped on the tiny stage at the Elbo Room, dressed like they just fell out of a viral video about Dolores Park to compete in a series of typical Mission activities on their way to claiming the inaugural Mr. Mission title. If all this sounds kind of familiar, that would be because we just did this last week for the Marina. While the beauty-pageant-for-boys format (and the charity benefitting from it) may have been the same, the Mission edition boasted slightly less conspicuous alcohol consumption and loads more shoveling of street food in to the contestants faces. Also: bike riding, burrito eating, and additional dick wagging.
The first thing we noticed about last night's lineup was that the organizer only rounded up six contestants. (And only five are listed on the event's site. The sixth, 'Deep Jawa was a "Wild Card Candidate". (As a neighborhood fixture Deep seemed like a ringer.) Compared to the fourteen dudes jockeying for Marina supremacy, we can't help but wonder if maybe the Mission is actually just indifferent to this sort of thing. In our experience, the Mission is indifferent to a lot of things, especially when it comes to measures of popularity.
After candidates hyped themselves up with a musical introduction, round one (of six total) allowed each of them to show of their fixie prowess with a track stand competition. Contrary to common belief, apparently two-thirds of the Mission has never seen a fixed gear bicycle before because only Michael "Don Cornelius" Thomas managed to balance for more than a couple seconds, winning perfect scores for style in the process. Corner Store George, a San Francisco native with a huge fanbase and cornrows braided specially (ironically?) for the occasion, sort of just fell over and gave the crowd the finger.
Round two emulated the regretful, but inevitable, 1 a.m. tradition of gorging oneself on bacon-wrapped hot dogs purchased from a street vendor. While most contestants tried to win the eating contest on stomach capacity alone, 23-year-old dotcom employee Naveen Agrawal, set himself apart by showing an actual sense of humor about the whole thing. Rather than stuffing his face like he just got kicked out of Beauty Bar and needed to eat his feelings, Naveen calmly removed a jar of artisan mustard from his fanny pack, spooned it on his hot dog and made a slow food scene out of the round. He didn't eat the most hot dogs, but class ought to count for something. (We have some reservations about the fanny pack though.)
The Dolores Park Fashion show in round three was a parade of outfits that ranged from weird-but-we've-seen-it-done (boxer briefs, nothing else) to standard uniform (cuffed jeans, white v-neck). Naveen, who was kind of a crowd favorite at this point, lost some style points for his jorts, which were apparently not frayed authentically enough at the cutoff point. While Deep ought to get some recognition for turning himself in to a human discoball, Cody Frost won points for that ubiquitous Mission accessory: an iPhone with spotty coverage.
Joey the Cat, a National Skeeball champion who spent most of the evening dressed in a fuzzy, tiger-print three-piece suit, repeatedly showed off his cat-like ability to make a mess while drinking. Especially when his ritalin-addled dance moves shattered a glass on stage during the talent portion. (His talent was jerking around to music like a crazy person, apparently.) No one bothered to clean it up. One judge mentioned she wanted to punch him in the face, which is indicative of something.
After Don Cornelius taught the ladies in the audience how to handle themselves in the neighborhood by putting harmless hipster hosts in a stranglehold, and Cody Frost folded a giant paper mustache out of a paper bag — it was obvious Corner Store George's blunt-rolling skills were the crowd pleaser here. After rolling an impressively fat blunt in under the allotted two minutes (while a friend rapped about his skills with cracked cigar), George pulled out a couple extras from his pocket, just for good measure. They were sparked up and passed around the eager front-row folks crowd without anyone so much as batting an eye.
The final round (we skipped over the Q&A section, but we'll get back to that in a second) got even messier with a hands-free burrito eating relay. Each contestant, joined by two friends from the audience, ate their way through a super burrito (including removing the foil) as fast as humanly possible. Needless to say this was just a disastrous mess that resulted in a couple people flopping sloppy tortillas around like really gross-looking, bearded vultures tearing at the flesh of a tiny animal whose internal organs were lined with guacamole. If dedication to the Mission's most hyped menu item was the goal here, then Deep definitely won when he followed his lost pile of rice and beans to the floor and continued eating.
The relatively tame Q&A session, which fell in the middle of the competition was where things really got existential for Missionites. The questions, picked at random, included "What would you say to Mr. Marina?", which seems a little insecure if you ask us. We don't recall hearing any sort of "Would you like to punch a kid on a fixie?" comments coming from the Marina crowd last week — and we think that says something about how the folks in the Mission (or possibly just the event's organizers) define the neighborhood in relation to the rest of the city.
Here's the thing about the Mission vs. Marina though: If the guys on stage are supposed to be indicative of their respective neighborhoods (which, let's face it, they never completely will be completely), then the Mission is for better or for worse the more enigmatic neighborhood. Despite having fewer than half the contestants, the Mr. Mission Competition had three times as much diversity in terms of apparent interests. (And, well, race also, but we're all blind to race at this point, yes? OK.) Where the Marina's pageant seemed to be about who could play up the stereotype the biggest, the Mission at least offered contestants a chance to set themselves apart from one another. (Although we should note those can backfire: Deep's earnest answers to the Q&A questions and his talent portion rendition of Kermit the Frog's "Rainbow Connection" were met with boos. We, like that one judge, also wanted to punch Joey the Cat in the face after his dance number.)
In the end, Cody Frost, a the self-proclaimed worker and maker, took home the Mr. Mission trophy (a can of PBR). For the next year, until a new Mr. Mission is crowned, Cody's name will appear as a cocktail at Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, a coffee blend at Ritual Roasters and an ice cream flavor at Bi-Rite. (Fitting, weirdly.) Joey the Cat was the night's first runner-up despite his best attempts at being hated, and Corner Store George, with a hometown crowd behind him took third place. The event raised a modest $8,000 dollars for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, which is about one-tenth what the Marina crowd pulled from their trust funds and investment banking co-workers.
Previously: Mr. Marina Competition: Aggressive Alcoholism In The Name Of Charity