Oakland Airport and the Doolittle strip: keys and lockouts in the long-term lots, the rental returns and the freight yards

Twenty-three minutes is the citywide average, because the van works out of Davis Street rather than being sent across a bridge. Downtown and East 14th run about 15 minutes, Estudillo Estates and Best Manor 15, Davis Street and the works 17, Broadmoor 19, the Marina and Mulford Gardens 21, Washington Manor and Floresta Gardens 24, Bay-O-Vista and Bayfair 26. Outside the line: the airport and Doolittle strip 24, Oakland 26, San Lorenzo 26, Ashland 28, Alameda 30. The hill and the far side of the channel are honestly the slowest, and you hear that on the call instead of standing on a porch wondering. The window that arrives by text is drawn from where the van actually is, not from the average.

It means the figure is built the way a shop writes a line on a sheet: what the thing is, how it is counted, what it costs. A rekey is counted per cylinder, so a house with a front door, a back door, a side gate and a garage is four cylinders. Hardware and exit devices are counted per door. A lockout is counted per visit, once, however many minutes it takes. When you say what you have on the call, the count is done then and there, so the figure and its unit both come back before anything is agreed to.

Almost never, and never without your say-so. Picks, decoders and bypass tools cover apartment cylinders off Bancroft, post-war deadbolts in the Manor, mortise sets in Best Manor, aluminum storefronts on East 14th, most car doors and most safes, and the lock goes back to work afterward. The exceptions are a high-security cylinder, one already smashed, or one welded around a snapped blade. When that is the door, you hear it plainly, you hear what would go back in its place, and you choose. The figure does not move either way.

The $89 visit, the labor, whatever hardware goes on, and the night hour when there is one, all rolled together. Stairs, a buzzer lobby, a gated yard on Alvarado, a long driveway up in Bay-O-Vista, a unit at the back of a complex: none of that moves it. The one thing that can add is extra work you decide on once the technician is standing there, such as repinning the back door while the front one is open. That gets a figure of its own, said out loud, and it starts when you say so.

Saturday, Sunday and holidays cost what a Tuesday afternoon costs. Only the clock changes it: $45 between 8pm and midnight, $80 between midnight and 7am. Both are folded in before you hear a figure, so nothing appears later. A house lockout that is $119 in daylight comes back as $164 at eleven at night and $199 at four in the morning, and the receipt matches what you agreed to.

No. Plenty of this city rents, and a tenant is the customer rather than a complication. For a lockout, bring photo ID showing the address, or ID plus something on your phone tying you to the unit: a lease page, a utility bill, a rent receipt, addressed mail. Give the building and the unit number on the call so the van is not circling a block off Bancroft looking for the right entry. Nobody is telephoned about you, and no owner has to approve putting you back inside the place you pay for.

Counted per cylinder, so a fourplex with front and back doors is eight cylinders and comes back as one figure. Each unit can sit on its own key with a single management key over the set, so you carry one key rather than a ring. Old keys are returned in labeled bags to check against whatever the outgoing tenant handed over. The receipt lists every door by unit. A manager acting for an owner who lives elsewhere can approve the work with a management agreement or a text from the owner, and the receipt can be addressed to either party or both.

Usually not, and that is most of the morning work in this city. Estudillo Avenue, Best Manor and the Broadmoor curves are full of mortise bodies and knob sets that still turn well and only need repinning so keys from three owners ago stop working. Three things genuinely earn replacing: a cylinder with real wear in it, a bolt whose throw no longer reaches the frame, and a strike screwed into trim instead of the stud behind it, which is the single detail that decides whether a door survives a kick. Which of the three applies to yours is said before anything is unscrewed.

That is the afternoon. Man-doors beside roll-ups on Davis Street, freight and yard doors along Doolittle Drive, stockrooms and small factory offices on Alvarado, exit devices at the back of kitchens on Washington Avenue. Early starts are normal, because a shop that cannot open at seven is losing a shift, not a morning. Anything bigger than a single door — a master key set, an access control run, a building that has never been surveyed — gets walked and counted in person before a figure goes on it.

Yes, and a good share of the car work lives in exactly those places: the Bayfair Center lots, the San Leandro and Bay Fair BART garages, the airport long-term rows and rental returns off Doolittle, the Marina lots, a carport behind a building on Halcyon. Name the lot and give a level, a row or the color of the car, because Bayfair on a Saturday is a lot of parking. A gated garage needs somebody who can get the van through the gate. None of it changes the figure.