andrew r oh this is a really good question uh not that the others weren't great questions
but i really like this one uh for someone who would be ready to break away from a garage shop
into a dedicated space what did you look for when looking for your space how did you go
about finding these locations okay um this is a wonderful question because just as every shop
is unique every space you could put a shop into is unique so i i absolutely can't give you any
specific guidelines of what to look for um i will tell you the origin story of this space is that
my wife and i moved here into the mission in 2010 well we moved into our house that we currently
have in the mission i've been living here for on enough for most of my 30 years in san francisco
but we moved into our place here in the mission in 2010 and up until then i had had my shop in the
garage of our place that was over in sunnyside another san francisco neighborhood and we
considered both of us like should my shop just clocked to the garage here at uh
in the mission but it's the mission there's no parking here you can't give up a parking space
that's ridiculous so i knew i couldn't put my shop in the house actually i hadn't quite fully
embraced that i couldn't put my shop in the house but that was the conclusion i was like rapidly
heading towards when my wife pointed out you know this used to be an industrial neighborhood
if we just spend some time looking we should be able to find something and so uh sure enough uh
i we spent about seven or eight months looking at a bunch of different commercial spaces here in the
mission and none of them were perfect none of them were perfect but you've got to look at a bunch of
spaces to kind of dial into what you really think you need you got to just look at spaces
that's the first thing is you've got to log the institutional knowledge of like what's out there
and then you talk to the to the rental agents you talk to the realtors that you're talking to
you ask them about other inventory they might have um when i saw this space it had no floor
this was an auto shop from the early part of the 20th century and as such the floor slant from the
front door all the way back to where i'm sitting where i'm sitting here i am about 18 to 20 inches
above empty space um and so we i i had to have the floor built here when i moved in uh at a fair bit
of an expense but it's inch and a half inch and a quarter tonguing groove plywood i made sure that
the floor was specked to handle both the mill and the lathe times two uh and it has handled those
great um but this wasn't a perfect space this was a former marble cutting shop when i moved in here
uh there was dust everywhere we power washed the whole interior of this and we still didn't
get all the dust um and it took me a while to understand the possibilities that were here i
was looking at this raw space with no floor the slant i didn't know how that was going to work
and slowly it dawned on me and the team that oh no i think i could move in here
so when you are going out and looking at potential spaces the first step is to go look at a bunch and
don't get too attached at the first couple that you see because you'll want to solve this problem
i saw a dentist's office around the corner here and i was like oh this i can make this work and my
assistant at the time was like i don't think you can and i don't think you need to she was she was
really smart about it she was like wait and then she was the one that saw this space and was like
open your eyes a little wider and see the possibilities here because there
are a lot and she was absolutely right um but this specific transition andrew r that
you're asking about the transition from moving from a garage shop to paying money
for a real shop that's not in your house that is that is such a coming of age as a maker that is
a real moment um and it like it was a great moment for me when i finally did it i think
am i right this is yeah this here is the first shop i've ever had that wasn't in my house
yeah that's true this is the first shop i've ever had that wasn't somehow cobbled into my
house or my apartment or my basement um and i mean i remember when ryan nagata moved into his
first space we talked about it a lot uh and he's had one or two spaces since then um
it's a scary transition you're starting to make a little money with the making that you do
you fee or you simply feel like its priority is high enough in your life that you want to pay
for the expense of having that studio space i have a good friend who rented a painting studio during
covet because he wanted to paint and he rents this space in a communal space of a bunch of other
painters and and artists and it changed his life being able to go there uh in the afternoons and
dial in to dial into his thing i i i'm a big believer in ascertaining that that has a bona
fide financial value to you and allocating a certain amount of your income to go do it
um it's a highly empowering decision uh and in order to answer that decision in order to solve
that problem yeah my my advice is see as many spaces as you can comb through craigslist uh meet
realtors ask them about other inventory go look at spaces that sound like they might not be great
and you're gonna find you have weird points of view that you didn't expect like oh i'd really
like it to be drivable to a sandwich or walkable to public transit those are real considerations
that you that you must consider i was really happy with this space because it is close to public
transit it makes it easy for me to ask people to come here it's easy to find easy to park near uh
it's been nearly ideal except for some difficulties in the neighborhood
okay a good portion of us have had our cars broken into across the street here and that's
a real that's a messed up consideration that that has to be taken into account and it's
one of the reasons that i you know that we are considering moving in some way huh it's just
even saying that fills me with such both anxiety and excitement at the same time um let's see okay
um
cypherian has this question which i really enjoy uh sifurion wants to know as you work on the road
do you pack up tools and equipment from the cave or do you have another set of your normally needed
tools based on the job if you have a separate set could you possibly do a video on your mobile setup
this is a great great question i do not have a second set of tools just for traveling i make that
set of tools by going shopping in here in the shop when it's time for me to travel um and i don't
and i rarely bring a big set of tools i usually think through what are the things that would be
that are easy for me to bring that would be like make my life really difficult if i didn't have
them so like when i headed to new york with my ghostbusters uh my whole ghostbusters uh getup
i didn't bring all the tools i might need for handling everything i didn't bring a saw
i really couldn't imagine a circumstance in which i was going to need to saw something but i brought
lots of different kinds of tape for repair and dressing i brought uh ca glue that goes in almost
every road kit i ever make plus an accelerator for the ca glue i brought a little a kit of some
small nuts and bolts i brought a few drill bits uh let's see what else i always bring
a blade of some kind an x-acto blade or a mat knife i always bring a thwacker oh my gosh yeah
um i always pack some kind of little hammer of some of some sort i recently found that like
you can buy these old wooden mallets on ebay for pennies i mean this i think i paid like 10 bucks
for this beautiful 100 year old magnificent piece of wood yeah um i definitely bring a thwacker
uh i definitely bring lots of different kinds of tape that might be difficult to find
like aluminum tape sealing tape fiberglass tape those kind of things what else do i grab i mean
for glues the ca glue is the one i know that if i like again you could find most
of the stuff at the hardware store so i really try and limit it oh yeah i bring things like
um my long alligator pliers so these are like surgical pliers with a tiny little alligator clamp
out here at the end this is definitely something i frequently bring because when you've got to fish
something out of something on the on the on the road you really like this is one where you're
this is the only thing that's going to do that right um i bring a good pair of wire nippers uh uh
and i frequently oh yeah for the ghostbusters pack i also brought an assortment of wire strippers a
soldering iron and some lugs and electrical tape uh no i did not bring i tell a lie i did not bring
the soldering iron because i'm thinking on the road it's stripping and lugging it's i'm not
worrying about heat shrink or like nice looking wiring this is all triage so maybe that's the best
way to describe how i think about it i think of like a road kit as mostly for triage rather than
refined making and i figure i'll bring tools that are hard to replace in the field and i'll
supplement them if i need to with stuff i get at the hardware store it's a great question sifurion