Some Jerk Tried to Steal Lucky 13’s Sign

A Market Street pedestrian says they thwarted a thief who was attempting to swipe Lucky 13’s sign from its facade.

Mission Street dive bar Lucky 13 has ducked disaster time and time again, in a way that’s made its name into a self-fulfilling prophecy. In its latest brush with adversity, a suspect was caught on camera trying to rip down its sign, Hoodline reports.

According to a Facebook post from Lucky 13, a passer-by messaged bar management to say that they saw a man standing on a plastic folding chair and tugging at the bar’s big, circular cat sign. When questioned, the man allegedly claimed he was just “fixing” it, then took off, the witness says.

Speaking with Hoodline, bar manager Martin Kraenkel says he doesn’t understand why someone would try to steal the sign. “There’s no value to it, “ he says. “You cannot sell it for anything. And if you are a guy who comes to the bar and wants to hang this in your living room, how is that gonna work...No one would be stoked about a friend doing that. I know if I saw someone doing that, I would be like, ‘you better surrender that asap.’ I just don’t know what their reasoning is.”

And in other news...

• A mini-strike at San Jose McDonalds helped inspire a movement, as on Thursday fast food workers across California will strike for workplace protections from coronavirus. [Vice]
• Data from Nielsen (which tracks wine sales, among other consumer habits) suggests that for the week of March 22, sales of three-gallon boxes of wine grew by 80 percent year-over-year. [SF Chronicle]
• Signups at the SF chapter of Meals on Wheels have increased by 60-100 percent since the shelter-in-place began. [SFist]
• SF-based Instacart says that it’s added some new features to its app intended to help customers get their grocery deliveries faster. [CNet]
• A home baker in Berkeley has launched a community sourdough project that includes a starter share and an Instagram account. [Berkeleyside]
• Mountain View delivery robot startup Nuro has gotten a permit to test its autonomous vehicles in the state. The company says that two of its “‘R2’ light-duty delivery vehicles,” which have speeds capped at 25 miles per hour, will hit the roads of Atherton, East Palo Alto, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale and Woodside “soon.” [SF Business Times]
• Carnaval, a Mission District festival of music, food, and culture, won’t be held over Memorial Day weekend (as it usually is) this year, with a tentative postponement date of September. [Mission Local]
• Psychologists and bakers say that the Bay Area’s current sourdough obsession has a psychological reason, as “Recipes are very concrete. When we’re unsure about the future, there’s a comfort in the structure and predictability of baking.” [SF Chronicle]
• Noe Valley butcher shop Baron’s Meat & Poultry has seen its business more than triple since the coronavirus crisis began, going from selling 80 pounds of chicken a week to 80 pounds a day. [SF Gate]
• A brewery in the East Bay city of Dublin isn’t brewing beer these days, and has pivoted to the business of delivering groceries. [KPIX]
• Burlingame Japanese curry restaurant Curry Hyuga opened late last month, and has managed to make enough money to hire three employees. [SF Chronicle]