I am moving from the lovely Alabama Gulf Coast to Redwood City CA. Leaving Aug 8th and arriving Aug 14th. I've been spoiled by may 2-car garage here, but our condo in Redwood City has none. I'm looking for advice as to where I might be able to find/rent space to do simple auto repairs and small projects. There used to be a place in Santa Clara, Pit Row, but Google reviews lists it as permanently closed and their website is down.
I do all my own automotive/motorcycle repairs, I always have, and I'm a little stressed about not having a space to do even simple maintenance and repairs.
Surely in an urban area as large as the SB Bay, there has to be somewhere.
It's bad enough that I have to leave most of my tools, welders and air compressor behind. (We are keeping our house here in Alabama)
If anyone has any advice, I would really appreciate it.
Thanks!!
As somebody who grew up in that area and left for many good reasons, I would say no. Unless you have your own garage there is no place to work on it. The SF Bay Area is a good example of what Hell would be like if Real Estate Speculators ran it. Every piece of land is expensive and monetized to the nth degree. Any public space available gets turned into a tent city for homeless people who actually work minimum wage jobs and still can't afford to rent a place. You will probably end up paying other people to fix your vehicles and because of what they pay for shop rent, you will pay them a lot. It's all part of the increased expenses of living there. I hope that whoever hired you there is paying you well. You are going to need it.
CAinCA
Reader
10/22/20 12:18 p.m.
Somehow this showed up in my "latest posts". I live in near San Jose. Everyone I know that works on their own cars (not many) owns a home with a garage. All of the shared work spaces that I know of have gone out of business. Around here 99.9% of car owners have someone else work on their cars.
Leave all your automotive/motorcycle stuff in Alabama.
Live like a local in Redwood City. Drive a Tesla, or use Uber. 
See all the local tourist sites for a year. Yosemite, Laguna Seca, Monterey Aquarium, Mears Woods, Big Sur, etc.
Meanwhile, immediately start planning how you can get the hell back to the Gulf Coast.
I've heard that there's a lot of movement out of S.F. what with the pandemic driving a lot of work from home in what was already a largely remote-possible workforce who could afford to live there. That's not going to solve any immediate problems, but here's hoping it eventually leads to some relative sanity for the region.
(As an aside, I was born there and lived there 'til '85, but we left before it got as nuts as it is today; our house in Bernal Heights sold for $80k in '85... I still really like it, perhaps facilitated by only getting in a brief tourist stop every few years.)
I have a cousin who rents a space where he works on his cars. There are others in the building that also work on their cars there. He's in Mountain View I believe and works at Google (WFH)
I can ask him for more details if you're interested.
