Marina and Mulford Gardens: dock boxes, gangway gates and salt air, with houses on the flat behind Marina Boulevard

Weather does the damage down here and it does it slowly. A padlock on a dock box that worked all summer will be locked solid by February, the shackle welded into its body by rust while the key turns freely and accomplishes nothing. The lock comes off and a shrouded marine-grade body goes on, and what is going on is named on the call so nobody meets an unfamiliar brand at the dock. The same rust attacks gangway gate hardware and the keyed latch on any yard gate facing the water. Where a cylinder is merely stiff, cleaning and repinning is $26 to $42 each and it lasts another few seasons. Where the housing itself has corroded through, a replacement in stainless is $115 to $299 per door instead of whatever was cheapest the last time around.

Behind the water the district turns into ordinary streets with extraordinary driveways: a boat on a trailer, a camper, a truck that tows both. House calls here are house calls. A lockout is $119 to $205. A rekey after a sale covers the front, the back, the side gate and the garage door at $26 to $42 per cylinder, quoted per cylinder because that is the unit it is genuinely counted in. Where a door has been forced, repair is $165 to $419 and takes in the frame, the strike and the cylinder that absorbed the hit, with the receipt setting out what failed and what replaced it in language a claims adjuster can use without a translator. Riders lose keys at the boat ramp with some regularity, and a motorcycle key cut and coded on the spot is $115 to $269.

The clock here runs differently from the rest of the city. Saturday starts at six, when somebody wants to be off the dock before the tide turns and finds the locker key on a kitchen hook a mile away. Weekday evenings are quiet until the park empties and the last dog walkers leave. The Marina Boulevard lots produce car lockouts at $99 to $189, usually with the keys sitting in plain view next to a cooler. The van stops at the head of the dock and the case walks the rest of the way down the ramp, which costs nothing extra. Twenty-one minutes is the estimate and traffic at the freeway ramp is what stretches it. Between 8pm and midnight $45 is inside the figure, $80 between midnight and 7am.