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Surrounded by altars, marigolds, and candlelight, Marco Ruiz stood out from the crowd. In lieu of an elaborate memorial, Ruiz simply hugged a large framed photo of his brother Martin, who had died two days after his 19th birthday.
Ruiz was stoic, taking in the scene. When asked about his brother, however, he smiled.
“He thought he was the best dancer,” Marco grinned. In reality, “he was so bad — but he didn’t care.” After Martin was killed in a car accident years ago, 1,000 people attended the funeral, Marco added. Now, only the oldest kids remember him.
On Día de los Muertos on Saturday, the Mission, like the Ruizes, was focused on celebrating the past.
Potrero del Sol park filled with altars honoring pets, friends, teachers, children, grandparents, great-grandparents, and even strangers who have passed. Their loved ones reminisced, telling stories long past sundown to anyone who stopped by.
Martin Ruiz, according to his brothers, was the goofy, sporty middle child. He never said no to babysitting his nieces and nephews — as long as there was pizza involved. They had their own language of inside jokes.
The Ruizes once lived in the Mission. The siblings are graduates of Saint James Catholic school and, in the ’90s, their mom owned a taqueria and produce market near 22nd and Valencia streets. They moved away when the neighborhood began to gentrify, Marco said, but they returned on Saturday to celebrate Martin.
“Sitting with grief and not being sad is a beautiful thing,” said Cindy Predock from the center of a communal altar organized by The Marigold Project.
Above, notes handwritten by passersby fluttered in the breeze, clipped to string tied between three trees. The notes will later be burned in a Burning Man temple, Predock added.
For many, setting up an altar at Potrero del Sol has become an annual ritual. Artist Adrian Arias, for one, attends every year “to remember with beauty.” This year, Arias said, that means not just remembering ancestors and friends, but every Palestinian affected by war.
Others were new. Even though 24-year-old Erick Farias was raised on 24th and Mission, Saturday marked his first among the altars. It was a chance to connect to his Mexican heritage, Farias said, still giddy from dancing in the park’s marigold-strewn placita.
While most in the park traveled with family and friends, some arrived alone.
At the end of the night, one woman in an oversized black parka collected framed photographs from a communal altar. She wrapped them in plastic and slipped them into her rolling backpack, steeling herself for the trip back to Ocean Beach.
The elderly woman asked to remain anonymous, explaining that she had nearly been scammed out of her life savings over the summer and was now worried about identity theft. But she agreed to share images of her mother.
Many of her picture frames are dedicated to the family matriarch, who “worked so hard” she became skinny to the point of no longer looking “like a human being.”
This condition, the woman said, was the result of years on a factory assembly line in tropical Hong Kong. A framed scrap of paper — less than one inch wide and inscribed with Chinese characters written in soft pencil — is the last preservation of her mother’s handwriting.
Her father, she continued, had been the mayor of a small town in mainland China before escaping the communist party. There was more family memorabilia at home that did not make the trip to Potrero del Sol — this was her first time and she’d been concerned there wouldn’t be enough space for her.
On the bus ride home, the woman marveled at how receptive everyone at the festival of altars had been to questions about their loved ones. Mourning the dead, for her, had always been a private activity.
It was nice, she reflected, to share their memories.
It’s a shame that San Francisco’s fascinating election results can’t be viewed in isolation from the strange and terrible returns that propelled Donald Trump once more to the presidency. But the luxury of ignoring the bigger picture is something San Francisco no longer gets to do. As of a shade before 1 a.m., every last in-person vote was tabulated — 37,345 of them (20,000 provisional votes are pending). In-person voting is a bit like shaving with a straight-edge razor or knitting your own pot-holders: You could do it if you wanted to, but hardly anybody does. At present, 234,453 votes have been counted; a shade under 45 percent. The Department of Elections expects around 157,000 more votes to trickle in (including those 20,000 provisional ballots). That would result in perhaps a 75 percent turnout; San Francisco voters show up at an average […]
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Gov. Tim Walz faces a new era of divided government when he returns home from the presidential campaign trail, now that Republicans appear to have broken the Democratic trifecta that helped put him on Kamala Harris’ radar.While Democrats will keep their one-seat majority in the Senate, leaders on both sides agree that Republicans gained enough seats in the election to tie control of the House at 67-67.According to a tally by The Associated Press, the chamber stood at 65-65 Wednesday afternoon. It would end in a 67-67 tie if the leaders of the last four undeclared races remain ahead. Two of them are so razor-thin that automatic recounts have been triggered unless lawmakers waive them.The last time the House was tied was in 1979, and the history of that legislative session suggests that power-sharing will be contentious.In […]
See below for full election results from across San Francisco, including precinct-level maps and ranked-choice votings results. A total of 44.9 percent of ballots have been counted as of Nov. […] Election 2024: See results across San Francisco Source: missionlocal.org
By Vladimir Soldatkin SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - Russian industry may suffer the fate of car makers in Germany, which have shed tens of thousands of jobs, if it moves too fast to replace fossil fuels, a Kremlin adviser said on Wednesday. "The Russian Federation supports a gradual transition, a gradual transformation, so as to avoid shock scenarios on the energy markets, industrial markets," Kremlin climate envoy Ruslan Edelgeriyev told a conference in Sochi, southern Russia. "Miscalculated ambitions damaged Germany's auto industry," he said, speaking five days before the next U.N. climate change conference begins in Baku, Azerbaijan. Russia is the world's biggest exporter of natural gas and number two exporter of oil. It is one of the world's top carbon dioxide emitters along with China, the United States and India. Russia joined the Paris climate change pact in 2019, which […]
Follow along for Mission Local’s live updates for Election Day from across San Francisco. For updates in the run-up to the election, click here, and to learn more about the candidates and measures on the ballot, go to our election dashboard. If you like our coverage, consider supporting Mission Local. It’s a heck of an effort, today and every day. Election analysisTuesday, Nov. 5: Today is Election Day in San Francisco. Here’s what to expect.Imagine a political campaign is like a ski ramp, with candidates gaining momentum before soaring off into the unknown. If so, that would render Mark Farrell the Vinko Bogataj of the 2024 San Francisco mayoral campaign. You probably don’t know this name, but you probably do know who this is: He’s the Yugoslavian skier whose horrifying ski-jump-gone-wrong for many years defined “the agony of defeat” in […]
China has publicly unveiled the Shenyang J-35A, a land-based stealth fighter that has been under development for some time but which had previously only been seen in unofficial and frequently poor-quality imagery. While we now have a good look at the aircraft, many questions remain, especially about the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s (PLAAF) plans for it, since the base design was previously understood to be under development primarily for export and latterly also for carrier-based service with the PLA Navy.The first official photo of the J-35A was released today, ahead of its planned debut at the China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition, better known as Airshow China, held at Zhuhai Airport in Guangdong province, in southern China. The show opens on November 12.The front three-quarter view of the jet, seen taxiing, reveals several new details and sheds more light […]
It’s a shame that San Francisco’s fascinating election results can’t be viewed in isolation from the strange and terrible returns that propelled Donald Trump once more to the presidency. But the luxury of ignoring the bigger picture is something San Francisco no longer gets to do. As of a shade before 1 a.m., every last in-person vote was tabulated — 37,345 of them (20,000 provisional votes are pending). In-person voting is a bit like shaving with a straight-edge razor or knitting your own pot-holders: You could do it if you wanted to, but hardly anybody does. At present, 234,453 votes have been counted; a shade under 45 percent. The Department of Elections expects around 157,000 more votes to trickle in (including those 20,000 provisional ballots). That would result in perhaps a 75 percent turnout; San Francisco voters show up at an average […]
See below for full election results from across San Francisco, including precinct-level maps and ranked-choice votings results. A total of 44.9 percent of ballots have been counted as of Nov. […] Election 2024: See results across San Francisco Source: missionlocal.org
Follow along for Mission Local’s live updates for Election Day from across San Francisco. For updates in the run-up to the election, click here, and to learn more about the candidates and measures on the ballot, go to our election dashboard. If you like our coverage, consider supporting Mission Local. It’s a heck of an effort, today and every day. Election analysisTuesday, Nov. 5: Today is Election Day in San Francisco. Here’s what to expect.Imagine a political campaign is like a ski ramp, with candidates gaining momentum before soaring off into the unknown. If so, that would render Mark Farrell the Vinko Bogataj of the 2024 San Francisco mayoral campaign. You probably don’t know this name, but you probably do know who this is: He’s the Yugoslavian skier whose horrifying ski-jump-gone-wrong for many years defined “the agony of defeat” in […]
In a win for the prosecution, jurors today were shown a video in which alleged killer Nima Momeni made distinct stabbing motions, which prosecutors say match those that killed Cash App founder Bob Lee. The video was shown over objections from Momeni’s defense team. The jury was also shown images of the exact locations of Lee’s stab wounds, during testimony from Assistant Medical Examiner Ellen Moffatt. The video was recorded by San Francisco police Sgt. David Goff, who was tracking Momeni’s movements in the days after the stabbing in April 2023. When he captured Momeni on video, the defendant was talking to Brian Hedley, a private investigator who worked for Momeni’s former defense attorney, Paula Canny. In the video, Hedley and Momeni are standing in the parking lot at Canny’s office and the video shows Momeni making three arm movements — two to […]
This weekend, a sharp resident noticed on Saturday morning that Marta Ayala Minero’s mural on the northeast corner of 24th and Valencia streets had been vandalized. When I contacted Ayala on Saturday, she said she would be out the next day to restore it. And indeed she did just that. Restored by the artist Marta Ayala Minero on Sunday, November 2.2024. Courtesy of the artist. Marta Ayala Minero’s mural on 24th and Valencia Street. Restored on Sunday. Photo by a community contributor. When I mentioned that the mural had been somewhat different earlier, she gave me a lesson on its evolution. First painted in 1992, thanks to a grant from the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, Roots and Frequencies Basic to Our Education “had a lady speaking the phrase for “nonviolence” in a few languages.”The mural was based on a dream […]
Mission Local is starting an election blog for the week before Nov. 5, updating San Francisco voters on the small twists and turns of the campaign trail in the home stretch before Election Day. Sunday, Nov. 3: Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, big-spending political group, goes all-in against Prop. K — and Matt BoschettoNeighbors for a Better San Francisco, the deep-pocketed political group that has become one of the top-spending outfits in city politics, has given $89,000 to fight Proposition K, the measure to close the Upper Great Highway to cars. The give is the second-biggest campaign donation from Neighbors during this election cycle, after its $950,000 spend on Prop. D, the TogetherSF measure to cap the number of city commissions and expand mayoral power, while restricting police oversight. Like the Prop. D spending being used by mayoral candidate […]
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