Westside Evolution

Things We Won't Miss About Mission St.

2009-02-28T02:02:00.001-08:00

Don't get me wrong.... Mission St. is a cute little store and it's felt like home for a long long time.
But there are definitely some things we won't look back for!

The Parking Lot!!

Those aisle signs!

The teeny tiny back room!

That wall color in the deli!

The restroom

We're bringing all the employees with us... but we won't miss the produce back room!

This is actually just a picture of Jeni, the UNFI rep coming down the aisle by the deli. She and I both worked the front end at Mission St. back in the mid-1990s... ah, those were the daze.

Kitchen

Freezer

Exterior Dairy

Interior Dairy

Front end..

Thanks for all the good years little store!! We will miss you just a little when we close the doors forever in the evening on Sunday, March 8th... but by the time we open the doors at the new store on March 11, you'll be just a memory... and probably a disheveled pile of used equipment!!

Hot Tamales

2009-02-27T23:59:00.000-08:00

Thursday, February 19th

We were supposed to be having a meeting, but the giant pipe for the fireplace in the seating area (above) arrived at the same time as the tamale lady! The tamales took top priority.

JB is an experienced multitasker!

Yes, that is the segment of 42" pipeline Cameron found in Bakersfield for us to reuse as a fireplace chimney in our seating area....

WARNING: If you are unmoved by large equipment moving huge objects, the next sequence may bore you.

Looks like it was always there, doesn't it?? Don't worry... that isn't its final destination. Stay tuned for another episode of "As the Pipe Rolls"

Somebody stole John Hope's signs from the job.... I can't really figure out why someone would do that.... you can't really tell here, but Jason has drawn a sketch of the signs. If you have any info, please let us know!!

Who doesn't love a meeting?? At least we have doughnuts.

All she needs is roller skates....

And then we adjourned and returned to the store: top priorities? Cleaning the store and cleaning and sealing the floor...

Jeni, Mariana, and Bonnie

Sparrow, Rex, and Steven

Rex, NL's GM and Steven, our project manager from CDM

Kelly, Steven, and Mike prepare to garnish the already mindblowing floor.

Feet in consultation...

And Now In Technicolor!!

2009-02-18T00:25:00.001-08:00

We finally got power!! Woohoo.
The lights and the heat are on....

Westside Café

Cheese Department

Wine to go with that Cheese

If you were getting anxious about it, this is where the beer will go.

Yes, that is a huge pizza oven behind the hot bar!!

This is the deli of the mothership....

Olive and antipasti bar

Looking across the front end

Produce. Yes, it is meant to be a graphic
representation of light coming through the redwood
forest.... (for some reason, I can't figure out how to comment
on my own blog... go figure...)

Bonnie Doon Garden Co!

Nutrition and Body Care

Meat and Seafood

Week Ends

2009-02-06T20:40:00.000-08:00

The week ended in clouds, but the store looked brighter.

This is the finished mural over the produce department.

Still a bit more to go here. The orbs really like it!

Yup, he just painted for 3 days straight!

Here he is, Mr. J. David Blatt himself. He was freaked out on the top of the scissor lift...

Josh.....

... and Jared

The kitchen millwork..

Lovely!

The deli case is not only round, it has a purple glow. We're all kind of hoping it looks a little less uh, shroomy, when the lights are turned on inside it...

Still painting!

Finally done!

A whole lotta refrigeration got dropped off today. Dave and his boys from Key were on fire....

A look back at the mural..

Future hot bar..

Future salad bar..

Check out the cafe and juice bar!! Oh yeah!

More equipment! I can't wait till they turn the lights on...

First Week In February

2009-02-06T19:19:00.000-08:00

Well, it's February, but honestly, things are heating up. Grocery stores are being built all over town... jese. Go figure. Under an unseasonably warm sky, the young New Leaf continues to unfurl.

Brand placement for Slatter. We worked with the same crew on the interior in Half Moon Bay, and there is the strange feeling of extended family... we laugh, we cry. The Half Moon Bay project was before the fall of the empire and unpressured by the local expansion of Whole Foods, so this project has a more dire feeling than we had before...

On some level, its all about how we share space when we cohabitate, us humans...

And power... PG&E finally came to hook us up.

They don't like to share space, so we had to send AT&T home....

Backlit electricians in the deli... Mike on the left, Jason on the right.

JB, our site manager, and Josh and Jared take a break from building the store... they are sitting around the soon to be fireplace in the seating area outside the Cafe and bakery.

There are crazy metal beams supporting the ceiling and we have to cut the shelves around them.... it's a loud business. Jared is the main Shelfslayer.

I thought this shot was like ALMOST as good as Shmuel Thaler....

And in the middle of all of it.... we're starting to stock groceries....

UNFI is in the house.

Eric takes a drive by with the forklift..

Bonnie is rocking the house!

A pure field of grocery potential...

A FEW LANDMARKS:

Not only is the store full of orbs, two portals were also discovered this week.
This one is right in front of the NBC counter. When you step through it, you end up at Natural Bridges! Very cool.

This one is more disturbing and I can't discuss it.

And then there is the sea of tile.

Well, the good news is we all have plenty of work....

Muralize it

2009-02-04T00:01:00.000-08:00

Rhapsody in Tile

2009-01-25T22:50:00.000-08:00

The story of the tile that's going up in the meat and seafood, deli, and café departments bears repeating. Steven Crocker, our project manager, is the kind of guy who might sit with a cappuccino on a Saturday morning and cypher out a tile pattern. He's collaborated on a number of projects with Paul Burns, of Fireclay Tile, whom he introduced to me as the Willy Wonka of Tile.
And Steven did remind me of a kid in a candy shop when we went out to Paul's factory in Aromas to look at what he had in his yard. Steven had his heart set on Claymonde tile: Fireclay Tile's futuristic large format lightweight wall tile. A unique mixture of white clay and ceramic fiber is rolled into 3/16" thick sheets. Large ceramic sheets are bisque fired and then cut to size before being glazed in rich crackle glazes.

12" x 36" Claymonde in Kiwi
www.fireclaytile.com

Paul Burns designs the spectacularly colorful and delicious glazes for these tiles....and we couldn't afford any of it. We were like orphans looking in at Christmas dinner.... and then Steven noticed a MOUNTAIN of Claymonde tile, fractured and shining in the sun, stacked in crates. About 10 pallets worth, we estimated. It was variegated, dirty, and within minutes, it was all ours!
So, we've lived with this huge boneyard of tile for months now. We had it kept in a cage in the middle of the Downtown New Leaf parking lot while we tamed and sorted it, culling the healthy vibrant tile from the overly neutral or too strongly colored tile. We covered the walls of the deli and meat department at the downtown store with it, picking from the cream of the crop and biting our nails while we got a vision together and our awesome hero of a tile contractor, Keith Schuler from Elegant Tile Works and his crew Brendan and Eric, made it stick to the wall. We were happy with how that came out — ecstatic, to tell you the truth.

There is some huge irony in that Steven, this guy who ENJOYS organizing tile patterns, chose the only tile in the world that could never, ever be fully tamed, and for which no pattern could ever be devised ahead of time except as it happened through its application.... That's how it is with these things I suppose... you just get a concept going, and you start pushing things that direction.... and then... if you are lucky or good, something takes over, and all you can do is channel it. Keith Schuler made it look easy. And it wasn't! Need tiling? Call Keith. And I might have some tile you can buy too!

Have a look at what we have going on on the walls now at the Westside store before we cover them with counters, equipment, and menu boards.... as I mentioned, the tile is 100% reused, it was left over from other big projects and we bought it locally from Fireclay Tile. Here is a picture of Paul Burns with Steven Crocker.

Meat and Seafood...

The Deli! The sandwich case will be to your left just in front of the door and the case with the éntrees and salads curves around that corner toward the hot bar.

I think the pizza oven is going somewhere in here....

And oh, stand back baby. The Café tile.
Steven lost a week of sleep while Keith was working on this!

I think its hot. I only lost like one night of sleep.

Whatever else you may have to say about it, I am fairly confident that you will have to admit you've never seen anything quite like it before! Thanks Keith!!

Color.... you'd think it would be easier

2009-01-14T22:35:00.000-08:00

So we have this intense green tile for the juice bar/cafe. This was the first "slapdown." The yellow is going to come out and we are going to cut back a bit on that really bright green color.
Regardless, the wall color, which is brushed out on the right, does not really work with the tile. And the darker swatch next to it is the ceiling color... but they are mighty similar. Seems like we're going to have to go back to the drawing board on the soffit color for the cafe.

As you can see above, the yellow lab isn't even very yellow, but look at it below here! Pretty darned yellow, eh? Beneath it is the color we'd selected for the deli soffit, which was a pale orangey yellow is again, way too close in color to the ceiling.... and doesn't really go with the deli tile.

All the colors on this side of the store keep turning really yellow, but I am pretty sure this red will stay red. This is for the wine department.

This is the yellow above the dairy soffit...

This is the orange for the meat/seafood soffit, you can sort of see the tile color beyond.

Maybe this shows the tile better?

Front wall color.

Stay tuned, we obviously have some work to do here...

Summer in January

2009-01-14T21:42:00.000-08:00

Out on the loading dock, things were hopping. Cameron had shipments flying left and right. It was crazy. Civilians were in the way. Steven was risking his limbs darting in front of the forklift to examine the granite slabs, never heeding the danger.

A crowd of sinks showed up to interview for the different plumbed positions available at the new store. A nice group really. We thought we'd keep the lot of them.

Some hopeful millwork waited outside the seafood department.

The vanity case is a total diva and won't wait with the other millwork.

I think she might be wearing fur. (No, just kidding, its a palmwood of some kind...)

Still life with produce and electricians.
As a side note, Steven was my foreground, but he whisked out of the frame just as I shot it.

Steven was in a bit of a dark mood, in stark contrast to the daylight streaming in the mullioned windows.

I gasped loudly before realizing it was merely a casually discarded tamale husk.

This may be the only time you ever see a COKE in the store at New Leaf....

Steven haunts the wine department.

Jared has discovered that earplugs really improve his on the job communication skills.

Or was it just that Mike was singing "I want you to want me" at the top of his lungs......

Not everyone was feeling as cheerful, as this piece of Madix shelving will testify.

And with that, Mercury goes retrograde for three weeks.

Gaining Face

2009-01-14T21:17:00.000-08:00

The exterior of the store suddenly started coming together this week. Here is a shot taken in late morning, looking at the store's north face where all the customer entrances and exits are.

The building has a neo-industrial corrugated metal thing going on. Great scrap!

Future outdoor seating area and cafe entrance.

Seating area and Fair Ave beyond.

I think what's missing here is the New Leaf banner....

Seating area with back to Fair Ave. Both the entrance into cafe, on the left, and single door exit from Bonnie Doon Garden Co and the eating counter on the right, are visible. In the corner straight ahead, there'll be a fireplace. There will be cafe tables out here....

View along the face of the building. I think this is where we get to lock our bikes.

Community Kitchen

2009-01-14T20:46:00.000-08:00

This is the community kitchen. The stovetop will go underneath that big hood.

Wall shared with wine department, to the left of the entrance to the kitchen as you come in.

Your back is to the same wall now, looking out towards Ingalls St.

The sink, appliances and cabinets are along the wall shared with the deli.

Entrance to the kitchen with the deli on the right, wine to the left.

Looking out across Fair Ave.

2009: A Tile Odyssey

2009-01-06T22:32:00.000-08:00

The meat and seafood department. Love it.

The Deli. Delightful.

Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

You mean we still have to do the cafe?
How lucky do we think we are?
Eventually, this tile shenanigan is going to catch up with us, and we'll be exposed for having bluffed our way through the entire project.
Sometimes, the best thing to do is just look and sound like you know what to do. And then something kicks in, and just pulls in together...
Here, Keith is preparing to trance channel the cafe tile.
Yup, that's it, that big pile on the floor.

I'm starting to think this isn't really all luck. I'm starting to think we hired an AMAZING tile contractor.

Dig it.

Other highlights include:

This fabulous mesquite millwork for the cafe.

Is it me, or does it look like a very young store?

A Flower Blooms in New Leaf

2008-12-31T16:09:00.000-08:00

Teresa Sabankaya, owner of The Bonnie Doon Garden Company, is opening up shop at the Westside New Leaf. Lucky for us!

Trying to picture it all can be just slightly overwhelming when you are standing in front of a pile of raw material.

The raw material will be a trellis coming from the cooler box to the wall.

I think they started lining up to do the Bunny Hop here..

Mr. Pennington (I think! Gotta double check that.) building the trellis.

This will be the floral consultation counter overlooking the seating area. Teresa would like a chalkboard to the left of the window. Juice bar is to your right, registers to the left.

There will be a counter here under the trellis which attaches to the wall on either side of the window.

This view includes the exit to the outdoor seating area.

Cooler box and aerial space above.

There will be a bottlestone counter top lit with Johnson Art Studio lanterns on the left and café tables on the right.

Meat and Seafood Tile Turns Out Swimmingly

2008-12-31T15:27:00.000-08:00

This is a little hard to see due to the sunlight blasting through the windows of the back room and sneaking under the soffit, but the tile looks pretty darned good. The solar eclipse of the meat department is a temporary phenonemon... when it gets a ceiling, the sun will be confined to the back room.

Here are some closer shots.

Is it me? Or does it look like sunlight on water?

Wish us luck in the deli!

A Store is Born

2008-12-31T14:20:00.000-08:00

It really starts feeling like a store once the aisles are demarcated.

It was one big space, now this aisle looks almost the same as that one.

And this one!

Here we have a story within a story, "An Aisle is Born"

Slater guys were working on both sides to help fit the pieces of Madix shelving together...

Try as I might, I could not get both sides in the picture in one shot. It seemed to say something interesting about perspective, and seeing all sides of a story, especially when it comes to wall building.

Here Rex and Cameron break down a wall while Michael and Josh build one.

Josh is the very first guy to stare into space at the register. Perhaps he has mesmerized Jared into finishing the installation.

Cameron has the last word.

The Pile of Tile

2008-12-24T11:13:00.000-08:00

Well, it's true, we bought a mountain of Claymonde tile from Fireclay for just $5 a square foot for every square foot we needed covered at Ingalls.... it seemed like a good idea at the time. It was really Steven's idea....he doesn't LOOK crazy, does he?

Ok, well, appearances can be deceiving. I am left to wonder if he was crazy BEFORE we bought the tile, or whether the tile is having an effect on him.

We have our own little chicken coop of tile out in the parking lot... here is a closeup of one of the MANY piles.

Here is some tile that has been tamed and brought inside for the Meat/Seafood department.

These are our fabulous tile guys cutting tile. I say fabulous, because they are going to turn that pile into a tile covered wall. It is really much harder than it sounds, and they really have to be patient with us. It is hard to talk art at a construction site, the timelines are just so different.

But it's important. On the right, the first attempt. On the left, the attempt at fixing it.

This is Keith, the head tile manager. These are the same guys that did Downtown for us, so we know they have mad skills.... Here he is having a go at changing the main field of color to blue/lavender so the white and biscuit colored tile become accents instead of dominant...

oh yeah, we're going to drive him nuts too before this is over. So far though, he shows no signs of cracking.... except he did look a little bit like he wanted to stab me with a tile shard when I brought out the camera. Ah, who can blame him?

Stay tuned for more episodes from "As the Pile Diminishes".....

Really Big Delivery From Santa

2008-12-24T10:39:00.001-08:00

That's right, it's a mountain of Madix grocery shelving!!

Oooh! It's a whole bunch of other stuff!!!

Even more shelves!

Look! Checkstands waiting in line instead of people in line at the checkstand!

The counters of the checkstands are made of a green product called "Forbo Marmoleum"
http://www.themarmoleumstore.com/

Love it.

Floor Show

2008-12-24T10:04:00.000-08:00

For some reason, the nearly finished floor is hard to photograph, it is a combination of shiny glare and dampening dust... in some ways, we won't really be able to see it until they day we clean it up for opening. This is a view looking out the Community Kitchen windows. The floor is not wet, and the shiny finish contrasted with the textured sail shapes is pretty dramatic in this light.

Here is a view looking down on the texture. You can see more of the color here.

This is really hard to see due to dust tracking, but this is a stenciled detail just outside the deli area.

This is a view looking towards the future sandwich bar! You can see sail texture in the lower right, and the brushed texture of the finish.

The sand-plasted plasma shapes in the NBC floor are crazy cool.

You know, I was really hoping those little white orbs were benevolent spirits, but I am starting to think I just have a crappy camera....

Color in Motion

2008-12-20T22:00:00.000-08:00

To view a slideshow or download pix:

Westside Evolution

Floored

2008-12-20T21:14:00.000-08:00

It's funny, how even in construction site folks end up hanging out in the kitchen. Here, Mike and Kelley cook up a killer concrete floor. Steven is picking out grout.
Check out the sail patterns in the floor and the morning light in the Community Kitchen.

Testing.... Testing

Deli

Funny thing this... the electricity got shut off and the grinder got left on. When the electricity came on, the grinder went off! Before Mike could get to it, it had carved a perfect Fibonacci pattern in the floor.

For a slideshow or to download pix:

Westside Evolution

A Day in the Leaf

2008-12-20T20:11:00.001-08:00

It was Friday. A rainy Friday in late December. A short dark muddy day, shot with passing sunshine. It felt like a Friday. I spent too long in the trailer onsite debating color choices with Steven, but when I did emerge, it seemed to me that it must have been a rather nice day. Mike Miller and Kelley Burnham, of The Concretist, were onsite sculpting and coloring the concrete floor. For more about them, check them out at http://www.theconcretist.com/. The concrete art is the beginning of the finish work in the store. You could say we are at the beginning of the end.

Kelley, Mike, and Steven at the door of the Community Kitchen. Steven is pointing out a detail in the raw material.

We do spend a fair amount of time talking about the floor, but in the end, the materials take their own direction every time.

Kelley and Mike were sandblasting around plasma-cut metal shapes yesterday, and took over the jobsite with concrete dust. Here are the initial results.... look carefully, the slight difference is textural.

Extreme left edge of floor pattern in Bloom.

These circles will be seeded with jellybean glass.

Look for two rows of circles heading towards Meat and Seafood in a sandblasted field with a jagged edge on the right.

These are the plasma-cut shapes. Circles in NBC, sails in front of the Café and Deli.

Command central. JB and Cameron at battle stations.

You don't see them sitting down much, so I took two pictures.

Everyone was working and Steven was just sitting there, a full grown man playing with scissors.

We looked at colors till they all turned blue.
Have we bitten off more than we can chew?

Just when you think it's over...

View a slideshow or download pix at:

Westside Evolution

'Twas the Week Before Christmas...

2008-12-19T22:54:00.000-08:00

And the empty store seemed mysteriously decorated. This is looking into the Produce Department with your back to the entrance. The Meat Department is in the back on the left.

Not only are the glowing holiday spheres somewhat remarkable here, but this is a nice view of how a huge duct dives into the soffit right over the Meat Department.

This is a view of the duct along the back wall over the dairy cooler.

Then, it does a really sensational thing right in the middle of the store...check it out. I say we paint teeth on it! There is a similar duct and intake along the front of the store too.

This looks left along the duct towards the deli, which is under the round soffit on the right. Across from the deli is the Community Kitchen.

This is shot looking back down the duct along the dairy coolers towards the Meat and Seafood Department.

This is a shot looking out the windows between the Deli on the right and the Community Classroom on the left. There will be a salad bar and hot bar in this space...

This wall will have millwork for wine on it and is next to the round soffit over the Cheese/Bakery/Café. I have my back to the Deli and the Community Kitchen here.

This is the aforementioned round soffit over the Cheese Dept. Wine is on the right and directly ahead are the entrance doors and outdoor seating area beyond.

Here is a look at the Community Kitchen.... the stove will be under the hood on the right and the sink will be beyond that.

This is looking into the cafe with the entrance on your left and Cheese, Wine, Community Classroom, and Deli on your right.

Here is the same view taken from further back...

Looking at the front wall, Produce and Entrance are on the left.

Looking across the store to the Produce Department.

Looking across back the store at the Dairy Coolers and Meat Department.

Looking at Deli on the right, Community Kitchen directly ahead, and Wine to its left and Cheese under the round soffit.

Front wall next to produce

The seating area and the registers will be on the right.

This is a shot of the ceiling, which we are not painting, looking toward the front of the store.

This is a shot of the ceiling looking down the back of the store

View a slideshow or download pix at:

Westside Evolution