The Mission District studio is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a free class weekend on May 16-17, throwing open its doors for an open house that invites newcomers and longtime practitioners alike to roll out a mat on their dime.

Let's put 25 years in perspective. Mission Yoga opened its doors in 2000 — before the first dot-com bust, before smartphones, before San Francisco became the poster child for retail exodus and storefront vacancies. While the city has hemorrhaged small businesses thanks to sky-high rents, byzantine permitting processes, and a regulatory environment that treats entrepreneurs like ATMs, this studio just kept breathing (deeply, with intention, probably through the left nostril).

We talk a lot in this space about what's going wrong in San Francisco — the spending, the dysfunction, the policies that squeeze out the little guys. So it's worth pausing to celebrate when a locally owned business not only survives but thrives for a quarter century. No bailout, no tax credit, no special carve-out from City Hall. Just a business providing a service people actually want, at a price they're willing to pay. Imagine that.

If you're in the Mission this weekend, consider dropping by. Free yoga is free yoga, and supporting the kind of businesses that form the actual backbone of a neighborhood — not the subsidized, politically connected kind — is always time well spent.

Happy 25th, Mission Yoga. Here's to proving that small business can still make it in this town, even when the city seems to be doing everything in its power to prove otherwise.