W. C. Morse

We stumbled upon Oakland’s historic W. C. Morse building in a paradoxically modern fashion when our illustrator, Michelle Ott, was biking past.

Awed by its architecture, she pulled over and snapped a photo on her phone. This photo begat a text, which begat several equally awed visits, which then begat a giddy lease signing.

In a nod to the building’s origins as the East Bay’s first-ever truck showroom, we relocated our Tech department to the space and stocked it with an array of the best home machines on the market. While our machines may not be able to haul the Port of Oakland’s cargo across the country, we think they still carry the same sheen and stateliness of a 1939 Peterbilt 260.

Our Temescal neighborhood cafe is just 2.5 miles from our Oakland headquarters—a proximity that enables quite a bit of dreaming and experimentation. In addition to our normal menu of drip coffee, iced coffee, and espresso, our baristas craft a small clutch of drinks and treats befitting the tinkering a workshop implies.