My company spent 3 years (Dec 2005 – Dec 2008) on Folsom Street in San Francisco – a storefront on a noisy street said to have 80,000 cars pass by every day. When our lease was almost up, we found a new office – happy to leave behind an office where the windows were broken twice, a laptop was stolen, graffiti slashed into our windows, and regular leaks dampened our ceiling (amazing since we were on the ground floor in a 4-story building and the water would leak from the top floor all the way down to our space).
Moving is quite cleansing. There were things in the Folsom St office that had not been touched since we moved there. The new office doesn’t have a full kitchen and full bathroom. The Folsom St office had a fully stocked kitchen (baking! cooking! galore!) and a full bathroom stocked with plush towels. The towels were carted off to the SPCA for cats and dogs to snuggle in. The kitchen supplies went to my house or friends’ houses or Community Thrift. While purging the office and sorting through supplies, we (Thanks, Lori, for the help!) sorted through the earthquake/emergency boxes full of food and supplies and discovered one of the best earthquake/emergency supplies – Asyla Whisky! Only to be opened in case of emergency.
On December 23 the movers moved everything from Folsom St to my company’s new office on 2nd St. I moved Ganesha in my pocket that day on an underground MUNI train – I think he’s worth keeping around. I usually keep him perched on top of my computer monitor.
My new MUNI stop is Montgomery station (used to be Civic Center). My company is sharing space with a small very friendly architecture firm and I’m excited to be sharing space again. We shared some office space 4 years ago when we were in Hayes Valley. When I first started my company I shared office space in South Park (South Park, San Francisco not South Park, Comedy Central) and I enjoy the camaraderie of people working in the same space but not necessarily working together or on the same projects or in the same industry. I’ve noticed, in the few days I’ve been hanging out in my new space, that the architects seem to have very civilized consistent hours and they all leave for lunch in the middle of the day. I haven’t worked around people who take regular lunch in over a decade!
My conference room has a view of a new oyster bar and fish restaurant (Anchor & Hope).
And there are some windows that look out to this airshaft. I love airshafts — old space that got trapped in time.
