The North Bay Frontier

Our production efforts have been taking us all over the industrial areas around the Bay–SOMA, Daly City, deep Oakland, Napa, San Rafael, seemingly wherever there still remains a pocket of that juicy, swiftly diminishing zone where people are still making the things we all need and want. It’s a thrill to get inside one of those big, blank warehouses and see all the specialized equipment and skills within.

Last week, we had a super fruitful North Bay day. Any trip through San Rafael calls for a stop by my friend Joe’s favorite spot, Muffin Mania. I like their muffins, I like their mural, and I like trespassing a little bit into the driveway across the street.

Behind a super regular stucco apartment building there remains a battered shed that curves around to a little mountain cabin straight outta Olde California. It reminds me of how fresh all of California is, really, and how recently it’s been ironed out with a blanket of cement, stucco, and Priuses.

After stopping by a luggage fabricator and the ever-posi Dharma Trading, we journeyed up to Napa to meet with a pattern marker and to finally get ourselves inside the Hide House. There we came across an incredible trove of every kind of leather, as well as a wee frontiersman under lucite. Content: plaster, wooden walking stick, fur hair, fur beard, fur eyebrows, fur evening stole, buckskin outfit. Lisa could not keep her eyes off the little guy.

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