I think there might have already been racks at Guerrero – I’m pretty sure there were. We set up racks and they came from somewhere – I think from stacks of uprights and beams under the overhang that had been left behind by Guerrero Produce. I think this is around when Sam Degelia started helping us out with all matters related to general contracting and building/fixing things – but he might be Gibson-era. (Gibson had required a lot of work.) At Guerrero, we set up full size racks along the perimeter of the enclosed portion of the warehouse. We also had racks along the walls of the covered but open area. We positioned some great-looking, artisinal, sturdy work tables in the middle of the room. And we had a good amount of floor space open for staging that which needs staging.

Not only did Guerrero have dock-high doors, it even had an second-floor interior pallet-size opening that gave the offices upstairs pallet-access to the warehouse. The second floor office area was a big room with reinforced concrete floors, but with only like 15 foot ceilings, not the 30ish foot ceilings we had in the warehouse area. But it could definitely handle whatever we could forklift up to it.

Now we needed a forklift.

One of the spaces we had toured prior to settling on Gibson was further east on 6th Street – next to the Post Office. Where Cuvee Coffee later set up shop. When we had toured through there, there was a forklift among the debris of the unoccupied space. Once we settled in to Guerrero, we reached out to the owner of that space and he sold us the forklift. A flatbed drove it down the street to us, and we were in business. We had someone out to service our new acquisition: “Oh, I know this forklift! I worked on it at so-and-so, and then it was over at so-and-so.” I don’t remember the details. But it was a 1977 model. A year older than me. I was almost if not already 24 years old. This was 24 years ago. I’ve lived as much of my life with a forklift as I’ve lived without one. Time is weird.